


270 Miles and More

by somonastic



Category: Happiest Season (2020)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Canon Divergence, F/F, It's gay to text a girl, Post-Canon Fix-It, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:01:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27821917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somonastic/pseuds/somonastic
Summary: A: It really was maybe the only redeeming point, getting to kick it with you. Thanks for helping me out.A: I would like to point out though that we are in fact...talking right now. Oh shit, the wonders of technology! We don’t actually have to miss talking to each other if we don't feel like it, do we?Right away, she gets a response message agreeing:No, we don’t.//Abby walks out on Christmas Eve and rides with John back to Pittsburgh, but the things that happened this wild past handful of days don't disappear. If anything, they stay with her weeks, months, a year and more later. But they soften, grow, change shape; they shift her life in more ways than she could have anticipated.Texts from Riley are waiting on her phone when she and John walk back into her and Harper's apartment. She texts Riley back and then they just never stop texting.
Relationships: Abby Holland/Riley Johnson, Abby/Riley Bennett
Comments: 198
Kudos: 464





	1. Now play the video in reverse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where is home if you're not sure where your heart is anyway? Some items on Abby's agenda back in Pittsburgh: texting, laundry, and the airport.

It’s a long dark drive back to Pittsburgh. Scrunched up in the passenger seat, boots off and knees huddled up to her chest, Abby only has eyes, heavy and red-tinged, for the endless stretch of empty road ahead of them. Traffic’s no issue at least; it’s still Christmas Eve, after all. 

Warm air blasts from the car heater while a mix of classic and modern holiday jingles sound from the radio. John’s chatting idly while driving, commenting on the weirder new Christmas tunes from this year and the woefully ineffective radio ads. They’re both aware the melodies and banter are nothing of particular interest and are functioning as a sort of mellowing ambient noise so that there’s no pressure to think or use emotional energy. John is blunt nine times out of ten but he’s considerate, careful when it most counts.

The roads stay sparsely populated, most people tucked cozily away into homes, happy squares of light flashing past them in the distance. It’s not snowing or raining but the roads are wet, so she hears the undefined nuance that dampness adds to the sound of treaded rubber speeding across asphalt.

Abby is half zoning out, emotionally and physically drained, and half disjointedly running back through her recent memories trying to process how she feels about them. 

It’s difficult. Both too raw, immediate as well as too confusing, blurred. It’s too soon. 

She’s feeling so much and she doesn’t know who she is anymore. Definitely not Harper’s happy new Christmas fiancée. Then what _is_ she now? Harper’s steadfast girlfriend who just needs some time before they can weather this storm in their relationship? Harper’s saddened ex, who’s going to have to unlearn being Harper’s girlfriend, unlearn being in a relationship, the happiness and comfort of knowing the person who’s always there for you at the end of the day?

It’s too soon. _It’s too late..._

She may have spoken the dreaded words but she hasn’t yet begun to unlearn all that. She has no idea if she’ll _need_ to unlearn it or just re-examine and double down on it. Concern pangs in her chest, guilt. Being Harper’s person of indeterminate romantic status hasn’t smudged out the instinct to know how she’s doing, to do what she can to ensure Harper is okay.

Taking out her phone, she opens their chat, rereads the last things they'd said to each other. She types out a brief message.

_A: Hey, I’m sorry for how all this turned out. What I said doesn’t mean I suddenly don’t care about you anymore. I know this hurts and it sucks but...I really, really hope you’re okay. Take care of yourself Harp_

She presses send, switches her phone to silent, slips it back in her pocket. Shrugs down in her seat, ears burrowed into the collar of her coat, and dozes off to the lulling peace of the muted radio, John quietly crunching the processed puffs he’d bought from the gas station, and the quiet yuletide darkness all around them.

//

John helps her carry her bag back into the apartment. It’s really not a lot of luggage; she can easily carry it herself but she’s exhausted, more tired than she’s been in a long time. It doesn’t seem right somehow to just step out of the car, wave at each other, and part ways so suddenly. So he follows her in. They drop her duffel bag on the floor and she pries each boot off with the opposite foot, the boots loose since she hadn’t bothered retying them after slipping back into them for the short walk to the apartment.

John makes them a couple simple sandwiches from what's left in her fridge. They let themselves drop into the cushy couch in the living room and John puts some direct-to-streaming holiday flick on the TV.

You’d think it would hit too close to home with everything that just happened. But it doesn’t feel that way. What happened these few long days isn’t a romcom; there isn’t an easy happy ending wrapped tidily like a box under the tree. 

It’s easy to melt onto the couch, chew on a sandwich, and let John roast the formulaic stories on screen like chestnuts on a very gay, very judgmental open fire. He has a special vendetta against “ _cynical city girl returns to her humble hometown for the holidays and is taught the true meaning of Christmas by homely square-jawed white as mayo high school ex-boyfriend ”_ plots. He's instead a devout advocate for “ _strikingly beautiful rural boy finds himself in the big city, hot six-figure-earning boss bitch teaches him to hate Christmas, gives him the gift of pegging_.” Better yet, make everything gay. Straight Christmas is tired and it’s fucking canceled. 

She's starting to feel more okay, more at ease. Glad to be home even if it’s different without Harper around. It’s quiet, it’s comfy and just slightly cluttered. It’s definitely not the giant Caldwell red brick Colonial, with dozens of girlhood trophies and oil paintings of boats everywhere and a spacious walk-in utility closet roomba prison.

Midway through a mouthful of sandwich she thinks to check her phone since it’d stayed on silent the rest of the trip. She sees two messages from Harper: one apologizing, thanking her, saying there is so much more than she can convey in texts but that she is doing okay. She's been in PJs with her sisters at Jane’s house, like they’re kids again and having a slumber party. Jane's made a truly impressive quantity of hot cocoa with cinnamon-sugar marshmallows and locally hand-pulled candy cane stirrers to keep them warm throughout their many long overdue heartfelt confessions.

The second text tells her to take care of herself, and that she deserves so much better than how this Christmas turned out.

And then there’s a string of three messages from Riley. Abby opens them, curious what's inside.

It starts out with a quick amusing update on her family’s Christmas about her college senior cousins chugging too much coquito last night in a poorly thought out drinking contest and lying down on the family room carpet this morning while trying to wait out their gnarly hangovers.

And then, shifting subject and tone: 

_R: Look, Christmas sucked. Like, world record sucked. Sometimes it does. But hey, that’s why you’ve got a shiny new year right after it, right?_

_R: It was really good meeting you. Out of everything else that was a nightmare, hopefully that’s one silver lining to the raging fucking hurricane that was your Christmas. Didn't expect to make a new friend during my annual holiday trip this year. Gonna miss talking to you, kid._

Abby feels warm at the message. She starts tapping out a reply. 

_A: It really was maybe the only redeeming point, getting to kick it with you. Thanks for helping me out._

_A: I would like to point out though that we are in fact...talking right now. Oh shit, the wonders of technology! We don’t actually have to miss talking to each other if we don't feel like it, do we?_

Right away, she gets a response message agreeing: _No, we don’t_. 

She smiles and resumes typing, now faithfully summarizing John's elaborate pitch for _Hurry Down the Chimney Tonight_ which is definitely never making any family-friendly holiday lists. Riley loves the idea and they spend at least an hour debating potential cast picks, the best of which she reads aloud to John with the agreement that if any of it ever comes to fruition they will each receive a modest cut of the earnings and a heartfelt shoutout in the credits for believing in the film all along.

//

After a lot of sleep and plenty indulgent lazing about the apartment, Abby is tentatively settling back in. It’s not as weird as it had been the first night she’d slept alone in their bed. She’s remembering now to make coffee for one in the morning instead of for two. 

John calls regularly. They’ve had the fish talk and after some moderate panic, she’d helped him apologize profusely to the owner and present his peace offering replacement fish. Miraculously, he’d managed to buy a fish that does look near identical to the previous one and the owner sheepishly admits to them that the dearly departed fish had actually been quite old and possibly already on his way out, and that the fish are mostly for his young kids to look at anyway; one of them’s determined to become a marine-biologist. He reasons at least this way he doesn’t have to worry as much about them waking him up one morning asking why Mr. Bluebelly was on his side and had stopped moving. 

Abby is still on break from classes and Harper's elected to extend her stay to work on the whole family situation, so she doesn’t have tons going on at the moment. Doing miscellaneous stuff to keep busy seems to be the plan for now. She alternates between doing her best to relax and lying around staring at the ceiling, contemplating her and Harper’s relationship—their situation, how she feels about it, what to do about it. Several days into her confusing semi-isolation, she finally unpacks her bag from the trip. 

Practically everything she pulls out of the duffel triggers some kind of unsolicited flashback. The blazer and top she’d worn to that first family—plus double surprise exes—dinner. The plain white waffle knit she'd worn while white elephant shopping with Riley on Main Street. Even the travel toothbrush she’d had in her mouth when Harper had booty texted her from two floors up. And that booty text leads to the creeping through the house like a fretful mouse trying to score some stress relief sex from its lesbian girlfriend and then _that_ leads to the unholy reindeer-on-rooftop level of clatter that can come only from awakening a vengeful slumbering robo-vacuum and then _that_ leads to history’s least convincing rendition of sleepwalking into a _rudely_ ironic closet and then _that_ —

Just about every flashback brings its own chaotic anxiety spiral until she can wrangle her thoughts back down. She puts extra effort into pushing past how humiliating it had felt to be, on top of everything else, inappropriately overdressed for having a shattering Christmas Eve meltdown in someone else’s house. 

Walking out to the car after leaving the Caldwell house for the last time, it had really struck her how far her fancy outfit was from the ideal outfit to be wearing while coping with heartbreak during the night before what was meant to be the happiest Christmas of your life: loose sweatpants and one of those giant hoodies that zip all the way up the hood, encasing your entire head.

The suit jackets she hangs to be dry-cleaned sometime later when some of her life energy decides to come back. The rest she tosses in the laundry, trying not to think of this act as a metaphor for washing away the bad feelings and memories and starting anew. That would be too cheesily dramatic. 

She’s been texting Riley on a regular basis at this point. They talk mostly about whatever dumb or inconsequential stuff comes to mind for either of them, which is collectively a lot of stuff. 

From last night:

_R: Is Santa a bear_

_A: You come into my home and make me read this with my eyes_

_A: But yea of course he is, with that beard and that belly?_

_R: I didn't teach you to read, this is not my fault_

_A: Omg he's a polar bear_

_A: Ah wait John says that's just actually a thing already. Santa is literally the archetype for polar bears I just googled it_

_R: There is truly nothing new under the gay sun_

And from this morning: 

_A: Is it terrible for me to admit I'm aroused every time Rose Trout explains food science to me on Epicurious 4 Levels..??_

_A: Doctor what do I do about this_

_R: Sorry, a psychiatrist is who you want. This is classic Pavlovian. Two words for you:_

_R: Telescopic_

_R: Pointer_

_A: Oh no!! Now I am aroused_

_A: I was about to go to the post office. Now what? What's Pavlov say about this scenario_

_R: You're gonna be okay. Follow these steps_

_R: 1) Open youtube_

_A: Uh huh_

_R: 2) Find a 4 Levels video_

_A: Is the lasagna one okay_

_R: Yes. Now play the video in reverse. You need to un-telescope the pointer to free yourself from the curse. But do NOT listen to the backwards audio_

_A: Is it Satan secrets_

_R: No it just sounds like a frog chanting Gregorian while being sucked through a boba straw_

_A: Oh hey I am no longer aroused_

Recounting their days to each other is another standard conversational point. In a way, the daily catch-up encourages her to try doing more during the day in order to generate more interesting conversation material. But boring or not, Riley never has negative feedback on the content of her days. 

Gradually, she’s starting to genuinely _want_ to do things and—whaddya know?—enjoy doing them. One night, she swings by a small photography show opening at this gallery her professor had recommended months back. Neighborhood walks when it’s bright out become more frequent. She winds up baking some snickerdoodles to give to a few of her neighbors who she doesn’t know particularly well but who she greets when passing them in the hall.

Riley also seems to be subtly working in a few mentions here and there that keep her broadly up to date on how the Caldwells, and obviously primarily Harper, appear to be doing. The Bennetts run into them a couple more times at some social functions— _R: They’re all the same after a while; I think one of them was a birthday party for this woman’s favorite miniature horse._ The family looks to be doing mildly better from what Riley can gather. 

If her initial anger from Christmas Eve had sustained up to now, the brief updates might be less welcome. But as it is, Riley brings them up carefully, doesn’t linger on them, doesn’t imply any reaction is required before smoothly transitioning to a different topic. Kind of surprising Riley bothers to offer these tidbits of insight to begin with. It’s pretty considerate, she tentatively thinks, especially from someone she’s known less than a month. She finds she appreciates the gesture.

One afternoon while she’s putting dishes away, her phone buzzes with news on the sisters.

_R: Harper’s definitely sad. Experienced public game face though. But she’s not looking on edge and tense anymore._

_R: Sloane still will fucking kill you in a look, but sometimes she shares small blink-and-you-miss-’em smiles with the other two now_

_R: Jane’s about the same, maybe slightly more mellow. Nice to see her no longer on the fringes. They'll actually pay attention to her now without needing to set herself on fire first_

_A: Tbh that is a relief. Her vibe could get overbearing but like you just knew it was because people kept brushing her off? Came on strong, but nice person. Really good at painting. Glad they’ve ended their blood feud_

_R: Oh yeah, the three of ‘em actually chat now, willingly. All may yet become right with the world. Trios of sisters should be forming covens, not fight clubs anyway_

_A: So that’s the void I’ve been feeling all my life. Not having witch sisters. That makes so much sense now_

She's stomach down on the couch a couple days later rereading one of her densely marked up periodical scan print-offs when she receives:

_R: The Caldwell Elders are a li’l trickier. Family all still shows up together, haven’t seen them at each other’s throats or choking down barely concealed resentment_

_A: Baby steps_

_R: Ted and Tipper are a bit stiff, off-kilter. They’re not peacocking around in their element anymore. They’re less harried, insistent, showboaty. On and off they'll stare at each other like they’re confirming some kind of unspoken pact before they continue trying to act like normal humans_

_R: Impossible to say exactly what’s going on in all these noggins but I haven’t heard any booming remarks on Harper’s latest article, Sloane’s 8 billion dollar spa vessels, or Jane’s technical wizardry, aka ability to turn off and then on a router_

_A: Or a printer. Or an ipad_

_R: Exactly. Most notably, zilch on Tedward's big mayoral campaign since Xmas Eve. Not sure what’s on his horizons now_

_A: You have to assume it involves boats_

A bit later Riley texts that she met up with Harper, who’d requested they talk. Harper had been stewing on a lot she'd wanted to get out so Riley had agreed to let her just say it all first. 

_R: Came clean about everything that went down years ago from her perspective. Told me how she’d immediately known how fucked up what she’d done was, how as soon as she’d said it she couldn’t unsay it. Had no idea how to remotely undo the damage and “didn’t have the courage to”_

_R: Which I think I've always known. I mean I've had plenty of time to play the tapes back, it's all I was doing over and over the first months after what happened…_

_R: I kept trying to figure out why it'd happened, if I should've expected it earlier or if I could've done something different_

_A: None of it was your fault. There's nothing you could've done. And you were a kid, you both were._

_R: Yeah… It took a whole lot for me to believe that, but it's been years since. Hearing Harper discuss clearly never having had that space to process and grow from that was strange_

_R: She apologized every other minute. Wanted me to know she recognizes she isn’t “owed any kind of forgiveness for it and that nothing can really make up for it at all”_

_A: How did you feel about that?_

_R: I'm not sure. I could never have waited around for Harper to apologize so I could pull myself back together. A shit ton of therapy and teen journaling taught me that I couldn't hinge my being okay on a reconciliation that might never happen so_

_R: I learned to stop waiting or hoping. Not because I'd given everything up or it was impossible that Harper would ever come around I just. Learned how to not need the possibility anymore_

_R: It didn't feel like being finally given something that had been holding me back. But I think it felt something like that for Harper. I think she needed it more_

_R: She asked to hear everything I was willing to share about what life was like for me after what she did. She seemed really sincere and miserable as fuck and I’ve had enough time to come to terms with how it played out so_

_R: Told her as much as it felt right to. Pretty close to what I told you, but the slightly fleshed out version_

_R: Holy shit Harper cried so much, which is totally understandable obviously and it’s 100% healthy to cry it out but_

_R: God it was really sad to see her like that... Eventually I had to ask a busboy if they had an actual box of kleenex in the back that we could have because I was positive she was rubbing her nose raw on the sandpaper cafe napkins_

_R: Eventually she got it all out and seemed to feel better though. She thanked me for talking to her and said she'd like us to talk again sometimes. Maybe not like we used to but now we don't have to clam up if we cross paths in front of a restaurant bathroom again_

_R: When we said goodbye she had this hopeful smile of hers I haven't seen since freshman year_

After this conversation, Abby starts to process how she feels about what Riley had told her. She feels glad for both of them—that Riley got an actual apology, that Harper is serious about starting to confront difficult parts of her that she’d buried, making amends. Taking the first steps of a self-examining journey of growth, something like that. She’s glad they both got a little closure. 

Her thoughts bring her back to what it’d been like hanging out with Riley. How it’d felt listening to her story about what had transpired in high school. How much _pain_ Abby had felt in irrepressible empathy, how surprised she’d been watching Riley's face, speech, and body language while explaining it all to her. The brisk breakup plus forced outing combo is so obviously something that must have been downright traumatic, terrifying— _gutting_ . And for just a _kid_? 

But Riley had remained remarkably calm and even-paced throughout the retelling. Emotion was there for sure but not raw, stinging, festered emotion. She hadn’t shed tears, hadn’t even needed to hold any at bay. Taking her time, she’d laid everything out like it wasn’t something that had most likely taken _years_ to reframe for herself as anything more manageable than a cautionary tale on friends and romance, or a heart-wrencher of ultimate betrayal and social isolation.

And she hadn’t had any agendas, other than presenting some pretty objective facts that Abby wished Harper had felt safe enough to tell her about a long time ago. No bitterness in her voice, no attempts to color Harper a villain. She’s glad the conversation hadn’t gone that way, because Harper, a villain? It's difficult to swallow. A person who’d made tremendous mistakes and had deeply hurt girlfriends and family in unequipped self-preservation, and who struggled with understanding and following through on the healthiest ways to deal with the aftermath of her actions? 

Yeah. Yeah, all of that. But a _villain_ , Harper? No, that’s… The Harper she knows has never been someone who would willingly hurt someone she loves, even though wanting desperately to not hurt loved ones doesn’t guarantee you won’t hurt them. Abby has learned that she doesn’t know everything about the woman she had felt destined to marry, but she’s still certain Harper is good at her core. The alternative is something too incompatible with her worldview for her to have dealt with while sitting in the booth across from her almost-fiancée’s ex-girlfriend, ex-childhood best friend. 

It’s best her convictions hadn’t been tested by encouragement to rearrange her image of Harper into some unfamiliar person, ultimately cruel beneath all the good. She doesn’t know how she’d have taken that at the time. Maybe she’d have passed out into her drink just to escape all the conflicting, confusing emotional lightning bolts in her brain.

Clearly Riley had been through a lot and had worked through it. This is not a fresh wound to reopen, but something she’s lived with for years and evidently accepted and moved on from. That, far more than Johns Hopkins or anything else could, had made her stand out to Abby in the short time they’d interacted. She had admired Riley’s openness with herself, her clear resilience, grace, empathy; and now it gives her the beginnings of some hope, some courage that she herself can eventually get through this.

_//_

Riley mentions at 3PM on a Tuesday that they should really try just actually talking on the phone as a supplement to their texting habit. 

_R: Abby, your premium jokes are stunning, honestly, but some tough-love constructive crit: they really need that vocal delivery element to land_

_A: Haaaa_

_A: I’m cool with that, I tend to prefer calls anyway. Texting’s totally fine but there’s, geez, so much of it now. Why don’t people just call each other more often?_

_R: Wow, is it required for art historians to take a Luddite vow for the rest of their lives? Or were you just always like this? Are you actually an octogenarian cursed to appear forever youthful_

She frowns a tiny bit.

 _A: I’m not a Luddite! I use the same phone to call people as I do to text, it’s a function literally built into the same device!!_

_R: Whatever you say, Pops._

A moment later, Abby receives an incoming call. She grins as she swipes to accept it, slouches down further into the couch, and brings the newfangled communication rectangle to her ear.

//

Harper insists she doesn’t need Abby to come pick her up from the airport, but Abby insists it’s in her nature to pick people up from airports anyway and that she needs the excuse to go outside. Harper had decided to fly the hour and ten back from PHL to PIT. Quicker travel than driving the rental car back (it’s left unsaid that it would probably be boring and worse lonely and _worst of all_ it would bring back memories of surprising Abby with the minor detail that she wasn’t out to her parents and they’d have to pretend to be straight for the holidays).

They take the West Busway back to their neck of the woods. Harper’s always liked public transportation; it’s one of the things that had made Abby often forget that Harper came from money. Her enthusiasm for transit had always seemed like just a zest for life, but Abby wonders now if it isn’t at least partly appealing to Harper because it is so starkly different from her upbringing, because it bears zero resemblance to the overbearing small town high society lifestyle she’d grown up with. 

In any case it gives them some time to just adjust to being in the same space again without it being only the two of them confined to a space. They address each other little and stick to meaningless small talk—how was the turbulence, the in-flight movies, any crying babies or loudly snoring people? It’s obviously kind of awkward but not the worst. Harper smiles at her so hopefully, but like she’s trying not to be too obvious or eager. Like maybe Harper doesn’t want to pressure her into anything by wanting too much, too soon for them to be comfortable around each other again.

They get home. Abby lets Harper step in first. Her tall form pauses before she crosses the threshold of their door frame. She takes a look around once she’s through the doorway, almost as though she’s been away for months instead of a couple weeks. Abby watches her from the hallway, feels a pang of nostalgia. 

Tells her, “Welcome home, Harper.” 

Harper half-turns back to her, surprised at first and then smiling. Her blue eyes are bright in a way that echoes through every day they’ve spent since they’d chosen each other. When Harper steps tentatively forward then gathers her into her arms, Abby accepts the hug, closes her eyes, and allows her worries to fade out for a moment, just sinking into the feeling of being held again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was honestly me trying to write one of those cool time lapse oneshots and realizing 20k words in that such was not to be. 
> 
> I appreciate every read, kudo, and bookmark and I love every comment! So please let me know what you think and how you liked it :]
> 
> If you'd like to hit me up for any reason, I'm reachable at a bunch of internet spots listed in my profile. @somonastic or just somonastic on Tumblr, Twitter, and IG. 
> 
> If you like this sort of thing, I may make a post per chapter on Tumblr with some of my thoughts while writing the chapter. Have a nice day friend, and enjoy a sparkly trope-filled Christmas romper on me.


	2. Warm in more than the physical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some of the best things for your emotions are comfort foods, scheduling, the postal service, and talking things out like adults.

Soon after they’re in the apartment, Abby starts tossing together some quick bolognese to top off the combined contents of their half-used box of spaghetti and their half-used box of angel hair. It’s certainly an offensive disgrace to Italy and all the traditional Italian-American grandmothers in the country, but it’s a crowd pleasing comfort food for the two of them. 

“You’re always inevitably starving after air travel,” she says when Harper watches curiously as she lets one pot boil and waits patiently for an acceptable light golden shade to cue her to stop sautéing. 

Harper leaves her bags by the stairs for now, takes off her coat and shoes but doesn’t leave to get changed any time soon, almost like she’s a guest in the apartment she pays the bigger slice of rent for. 

Meat’s browning with the onions now and she’s dotting around the kitchen for tomato paste and the oregano while Harper continues to observe from the living room, sipping some peach-pear LaCroix. 

She hesitantly says, “It’s really good to see you again.”

Abby pokes her head out of a cabinet and finds herself being honest when she says, “It’s good to see you too.” 

Harper lets her shoulders drop at that, and the nervous lines across her face smooth away. 

// 

“Uhh let’s see…the new piece is coming along. I still have a few interviews I want to do, make sure I’m getting quotes from people actually on the ground.”

Harper leans against the back of the couch, tilting her head back and looking off to the side into space like she does when she’s trying to recall something by mentally scrolling through her notes. 

“I need to get this guy to call his local supervisor though so _she_ can call the Philly office and set me up a sit-down with someone from their branch. _If_ any of them’s got more than six minutes at a time to sit down in the first place. They’ll be swamped for at least the next two weeks.” 

“ _Oof_ , the runaround,” Abby clicks her tongue, shakes her head in sympathy. “You’ll make it happen though, you always do.”

Sauce is just about done simmering now so she grabs two plates from an upper cabinet to get some noodles onto and start ladling the sauce over top.

Grabbing a couple forks from the drawer, she says, “I’ve been letting John bounce some ideas off me for a _juicy_ enough twist to a draft he’s helping a new client with.”

“He does have an unrivaled knack for emotional shockers.”

"Yeah, really. Oh, been binging Bake-Off again. Which makes me really crave pastries. So I did a _lot_ of impulse baking… Then ate a bunch of what I baked while watching more Bake-Off.”

Harper nods knowingly, holding her hands out to accept the warm plate Abby passes her.

“Yep, that's pretty on-brand for you.”

“I miss Mary Berry… And Sue. Mel...”

“We all miss them, Abs.”

Nicknames are safe territory. Endearments, anything too sweet or too spicy or with too much history are landmines. So far they've survived tiptoeing around terms that wouldn't be totally normal for any mid-level friend to call them.

“Abs” is above board. John calls her that. Her parents had called her that, and her Babcia, “Gail,” in her warm rich accent. 

In any case, shortened or lightly tweaked versions of names are fair game. Even Riley who she's known for not quite a month calls her Abs. Abby for her part has experimented with calling her “Ri”—like the bread—a grand total of _twice_. The first time had been fully accidental, cut off by her own sudden ambush of sneezes, which had probably drowned out the slip-up. 

The second time, a week and a half ago, she'd mumbled it, sleepy but conscious, into her phone. 

_“G'night, Ri,_ ” she'd said, waiting.

“ _Night, Abs,”_ Riley had responded. Friendly, normal. No sign of discomfort or disapproval.

She’s still collecting enough nerve to try it again when she isn’t sneezy and they aren’t as sleepy.

Flicking the burner off, she takes her seat at the opposite side of where Harper’s seated on their L-shaped couch so they can face one another. Clearing her throat she stares studiously at the spaghetti angel hair bolognese she’s twirling around her fork. 

She says casually as possible, “Oh yeah, Riley and I have been texting some too.” 

Harper looks surprised but for only a moment and with no hint of the accusatory pleading edge she’d had when she had brought Riley up herself in the basement, sounds of strained Christmas festivity just one floor above their heads. 

So Abby continues, “Yeah, said she’s been back in Baltimore for a week or two now.”

Ten days, but she doesn’t feel ready to let that level of specificity show.

“Anyway uh,” she quickly begins again. 

She isn’t sure she wants to linger on this topic in case it strays too close to forcing an emotional weight they aren’t yet ready to confront.

But she also hasn’t thought of a way to gracefully shift topics so she says, “Yeah. The uh...snickerdoodles came out really good by the way. You should try them! Well—we’re out sorry, John ate the last four the other day. I can make more?”

Harper blinks like her eyes had been unfocused a second ago.

She puts on a half-vacant smile and says, “Sure...sure I’d love to try them, Abs.”

Looking down into her pasta, she tilts her head and a familiar crinkle appears between her eyebrows, a sure sign that she’s mulling something over in her head, weighing options. Abby waits since she needs the time to reboot before trying to generate more safe conversational subjects.

In the middle of debating whether or not to bring them back around to Bake-Off she hears Harper say abruptly, “Mom and Dad are going to stop being a problem.”

It’s Abby’s turn to blink. She waits.

“Eventually…” Harper adds sheepishly. “Can’t expect them at any Pride parades any time soon but...I think we might actually get there?”

Thankful that she isn’t really the one initiating a more in depth emotion-heavy dialogue, Abby straightens up in her seat and nods, giving Harper an encouraging smile.

“Yeah? That’s great, Harper. I’m really glad.”

Some of the tension leaves Harper’s shoulders and she nearly sighs with palpable relief.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done if they’d just...stopped talking to me, cut me out completely… I’ve been imagining it—dreading it for years. I’ve been through every scenario in my head over and over—been yelled at, screamed at, shoved out the door, abandoned without a word, stared at as though I were a complete stranger who’d taken their little girl away from them…”

Shaky breaths fill the pause as Harper swallows down every painful potential outcome of the past decade. Her plate is trembling lightly in her hands so Abby gently takes it and sets it beside hers on the table. Harper’s fingers retreat tightly into her palms, fists clenching and unclenching as she slowly folds her arms to rest over her stomach.

“They have spent _so long_ spearheading our family a certain way. They’re, well, getting older—they were already so set in their ways, heads so far in the sand when it comes to the world outside what _they_ see it as.

“I know they’ve made awful choices and _done_ awful things and it’s going to take a lot more time for them to change how they think and behave but fuck it’s...it’s something you know? When I had no idea _no clue_ if there’d be anything left to salvage, to work with. It isn’t sunshine and rainbows but I’ve never expected that, even if it would have been nice. But still, it’s a huge step to me…”

Abby studies Harper carefully as she speaks, her eyes shining and blinking back tears, her hands starting to animate as she gets more and more caught up, breath quickening to keep up with her speech. She looks away as her voice trails off. Abby leans forward.

“Harper.”

Her head stays facing away but she glances back to Abby.

“It _is_ a big deal. It’s a very big deal! I can see now that you’ve been carrying this around inside this whole time even before I met you and I wish _so_ much that you’d felt safe enough to share this with me—”

Pained regret flashes across Harper’s features and her throat constricts around a hard lump of feeling but Abby presses on.

“— _but_ I get it. I do. I’m starting to see what you meant by saying it isn’t about me, that it’s you you’ve been afraid to reveal. John reminded me it’s different for all of us.”

Harper nods slowly, facing her fully again with intent eyes.

“Your parents showing even some signs of coming around is a big deal for you. _Standing up_ to them is a huge deal for you because you _finally_ jumped this terrifying hurdle without knowing where you were gonna land on the other side. Like that time I ordered the donut sandwich at KFC’s just to say I’d done it.”

A watery laugh erupts from Harper and the tears finally spill down her cheeks.

“Oh _god_ it was disgusting! Just fried chicken and _two_ donuts instead of the bread?? Not even one donut split in half ugh.”

“Exactly! I had no way of knowing what would happen. I could have _died._ Or it could’ve become my daily breakfast and then six months later I’d have died from the donut glaze in my arteries.”

Shoulders shaky from laughter, Harper rubs at an eye and starts wiping tears away as she comes down from the cathartic outburst. This is something Abby knows, Harper’s laughter. Making her laugh has been wonderfully familiar territory for a long time. She feels some footing beneath her now and smiles wider.

“Not knowing is scary,” she says softly. “And I am proud of you, Harp. You _did_ it.”

She is proud. In spite of everything else, sitting in this apartment they’d built a happy life in, no longer standing heart in hand in the doorway, she knows she is proud. 

“And you know, when you told me ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ and you meant that? I realized that’s true in more ways than one. You are the one you were hiding all these years and _you_ are the one you finally fought for when you decided not to hide anymore.”

There’s something else she’s been turning over in her brain for days now and she hasn’t finished untangling what it means yet but she suddenly wants to try. 

“What I said too,” she begins, taking a breath, “that wasn’t about you. It being too late...wasn’t really just about you. It’s me. It’s a lot of things all jumbled together and—”

Concern colors Harper’s eyes again, a question in the quirk of her brow and the crease by her mouth. She holds Abby’s eyes and says nothing, waiting. 

“I know that sounds weird. It’s hard to explain it, I haven’t even figured it all out yet but… There just was no easy fix there. I wish there’d been. When you looked at me and said you’d done it I can’t even begin to describe how much it hurt.”

“Abby…”

The anguished face before her now isn’t quite the one from that night but it’s easy for her mind to imagine it is. At some point while she was talking she must have started crying as well. Without her noticing, her vision’s blurred. Her throat is thick.

“We were both so _so_ fucking desperate for things to just be okay, you know? I wanted it to work too. I wanted that to fix it and for us both to stop hurting. I wanted to feel relieved, to feel how I felt before we last left this apartment together.

“Jesus, I _missed_ being that me, that us! It felt like we’d left them in Pittsburgh. I’m still not that person, Harper. Neither of us is, I don’t know that we ever can be again. But that isn’t necessarily all bad is it?”

Is it? Her pounding brain is all feelings and little sense, but if she stops she won’t be able to start again. Whatever’s pushing its way out through her words is bound to burst out now. 

“You did it. But by then it wasn’t just being closeted to your family that was causing things to fall apart. So you could never have fixed it all only by coming out, even though you needed to let yourself out of that cage—even though I know it was so hard and _so_ terrifying for you. There isn't a switch you could have flipped to get us back to normal.”

The panicked anxiety in Harper's eyes has gone down. She doesn't offer any disagreement so Abby presses on.

“We can’t be exactly who we were. But maybe that’s fine? Maybe who we’re each going to become eventually will be different but just as good—better even. You took a big step towards that future self. I need to figure out how to find who I’m going to be.”

The words are all out now she guesses. In any case she’s drained of the breath and energy to squeeze any more out for the moment. Inside her ribcage her pulse pounds, her lungs work to even out her breathing. She lowers her head and closes her eyes to reorient herself.

“I think you’re right.”

When she looks up Harper’s face has softened to an accepting sort of sadness, the hurt mostly smoothed over now.

“There is no switch, you’re right. There’s so much that I wish I’d done differently but there’s no way to undo them so...we have to keep going and not just throw ourselves at trying to return to exactly how we used to be. I’m ready to look ahead. I want to be better, happier.”

Abby feels a jumbled mix of relief, longing, peace, loss, possibility, more—so much more. The edges of each feeling are too blurred to pick any one emotion out so she lets them percolate around her. She wishes not for the first time, not by a longshot, that Mom and Dad were still around to talk to, to hold her when she's sad and tell her things will be okay.

“I know I’m lucky to have had such completely loving supportive parents, while I had them,” she says quietly. “And that meant _so_ much to me, shaped who I am—not just my queerness but all of me as a person. It was foundational for me. It was everything… I don’t know how I would’ve been in your shoes.”

Harper smiles warmly, eyes sad but bright.

“You would have done the right thing,” she says without hesitation. “You would have fought for love. That’s who you are.”

She's always hoped and thought that of herself. That she was someone who would recognize love when she found it and hold tight to it forever, never let it go. Her parents had lived that way, her grandparents. She'd been raised on incredible boundless love and it's always been her dearest hope—her destiny, she'd thought.

It's hard not to wonder, sitting here, what this sudden stumble means for her dream. How does it fit into the destiny she'd felt so near her reach when she thought she'd seen it shining back at her set in metal and stone in a small wooden box? 

“You know," she begins again, voice low, “when I was sitting with Riley at the party I was so hurt in those moments and confused, angry, frustrated. I told her I couldn’t even recognize who you were while we were there, that you standing in the room were so different from the Harper I’ve always known. I was so afraid I was seeing you for the first time, that I’d somehow created a fake version of you all along.”

She knows Riley had seen the fears she hadn't spoken, hadn't been able to voice. That she'd never truly known the real Harper. That the greatest romance of her life had been only a fiction created by a heart too eager for the love it felt destined for. That she'd been a fool to let it get this far.

“But she told me that maybe those two versions of you were both the real Harper. It hadn’t occurred to me but it felt true. The hurt made it hard for me to get my head around why this other side of you was so foreign and strange to me yet genuine at the same time, like a total transformation.”

Harper's mouth is a wry, regretful shadow of a smile.

“Riley's always seen people clearer than they see themselves.”

“That must have sucked, feeling for years like you were two completely different people. Like you loving me had to be separate from loving your family.”

“It did… I’m ready to work on becoming someone who doesn’t have to choose. I’m tired of feeling torn in two. And I'm tired of tearing other people apart in my blind, destructive fear.”

She takes a long breath in and sighs, closing her eyes for a moment.

“Did Riley mention to you at all that the two of us had a talk?”

“She did say you guys had met up, yeah.”

“Yeah… I needed to finally talk to her. It helped me a lot and I hope she got something good out of it too. I have always felt horrible about how I treated her… I hated it, hated myself so I just shoved it down but the guilt never went away.

“It was so strange for me after high school whenever I happened to see her or hear about her. It astounded me every time I saw that she managed to survive that nightmare and now she’s happy, strong, thriving. I wanted that.”

Abby frowns. 

“It can't have been easy to get there. That's all after high school," she can't help the edges of her tone sharpening, knows they've both already been through so many pains and losses tonight. "Before getting out of there it must have been hell—in high school _especially_ , without a best friend to lean on?”

Her heart pounds heavy in the cavity of her chest. She imagines the Riley she'd sat across from in that booth, but younger—less self-assuredness, less years between her and a heart shattering betrayal, before the chance to get out of a school and a town too small, too ugly underneath the too-shiny thinly gilded shell. 

“It was,” Harper says with conviction. “It was hell. God, _I_ put her through that—through _so much_ and I didn't even see all of it, didn't _want_ to see it so I hid like a coward behind Connor, behind friends who knew barely anything about me when I'd destroyed the _only_ person I knew at the time that had loved me _unconditionally_ for all I was…”

Tears spill freely, soaking her cheeks, but Harper breathes through them, doesn't shrink, is steeling herself to go on. Abby breathes in and out to the hammering pace of her pulse.

“And that's what's fucked," she says harshly, eyes blank, looking inward. She laughs cheerlessly, sharply, eyebrows tangled in anger or fear or outrage.

“I envied her. I _envied_ her! No matter how _wrong_ that was, I saw her whole and true at the other end of a torment _I'd_ caused and—” the words rip out of her wet, raw—chased by a gulping gasp for air, “—I wanted desperately to be like that. Seeing her living openly gay, accepting herself, and still having happy dinners out with her family? I _knew_ that if Riley hadn’t turned out like this—if her life had been totally ruined instead, if-if we’d lost her _completely_ I—it would have been _my fault_ and… How could I ever live with that?”

The thought chills through her. When a month ago Riley had been nothing more than the faceless shape of a girl Harper once dated, the thought of not knowing her now feels terrifyingly wrong. 

“I am so _so grateful_ that didn’t happen. It would be so _insanely_ misguided and selfish to even think about wanting to change places with her,” Harper shakes her head like she's shaking ghosts off her, “but I _still_ couldn’t stop myself from envying the fact that even with everything she went through she’d come out on top. Happy. I threw my best friend, my girlfriend, under the bus and still spent all this time since being a coward and holding myself back from being someone who deserved to be loved by her or by you.”

The shoulders that had been trembling high near her ears, tense with the effort of forcing everything out without losing all semblance of control drains from Harper now that she's admitted this crushing secret.

Abby looks carefully at her.

“You're worthy of love Harper. People aren't as clear cut as that…” she offers, knowing this whole mess is impossibly tangled and thorny and deep. “Even when you've done something terrible that you can never fully fix, you're still a person capable of good.”

Harper meets her gaze, eyes glassy and painfully haunted.

“I know you loved me. I loved you. I think we still do and maybe we'll never stop carrying a piece of that no matter where we both end up,” she reaches a hand steadier than she feels out to Harper.

“That all is real and we deserved—both of us—every bit of love and happiness we put into being together.”

Harper takes her hand carefully, looking at it like it's a brightness she hasn't seen clearly in a long time and no longer remembers quite how to handle. She squeezes once before gently letting go.

“You know,” she says, “Riley talked about you too. When she met with me.”

Abby’s heart skips.

“Yeah? What about?”

“She said you were a really good one,” Harper says. “When we met up she told me even though you guys had just met, she could tell you were someone who really gives the people you care about everything you’ve got. That you keep believing and trying and sticking by people who are yours. And she was right.” 

Something like awe floats behind her eyes when the words pass through her, like a heady weightlessness has been breathed into her. Riley had said that about her?

“She had one piece of advice for me before we split ways,” Harper says with a clear voice and a meaningful stare. “Do right by you, whatever happens between us. It's a gift I'd probably always regret not earning back, she said, to be loved by you no matter in what form.”

//

At first, everything reminds Abby of something from the before Christmas times, things that have changed shape or meaning in their post-Christmas world. Like when Abby pours their coffee into mugs that they’d glazed together during a couple’s night at one of those paint-your-own ceramics shops. Or sitting in front of the coffee table that had been their first furniture purchase together, even though Harper already had a previous coffee table, because she’d insisted she’d never liked it that much anyway and that she’d wanted to make this Abby’s space too, _their_ space—a home. Even the offensively hideous but incredibly comfy fuzzy socks Harper had gotten her because Abby was always complaining about getting cold toes when the weather started to cool.

It takes time, but more and more they become comfortable around each other again. It’s never the same as it was before, but their hopes are proving true; this isn’t completely a bad thing. There’s an intriguing added level of openness now. It had never felt before like a web of lies was driving them apart but it still feels like they can both breathe a little easier. Little parts of themselves they hadn’t noticed keeping a bit buried before, they now allow to float naturally to the surface. 

They’re committed to not putting pressure on anything to the point where for a while, all their movements around each other feel so deliberate, like each of them is defusing a wired-in instinct to make any move that might feel loaded, might tip their precarious balance. But this gradual movement forward is doable; the progress is there. 

One of their earliest dilemmas is continuing to cohabit a one bedroom apartment. Unfortunately, as plush as the place is, its pantry is not in fact big enough for a reasonable bedroom conversion. As vehemently as Tipper had dismissed the notion of two grown women not in a relationship sharing a bed, it ends up working pretty fine for them short term. 

It’s a big bed. Harper gets so exhausted from flights that she knocks out completely on her first night back, letting them skip over awkwardly discussing sleeping arrangements. Abby’s worn out too from their talk, so her sleepiness smoothes over any inhibitions about if it’s a critical risk to sleep in a bed with someone you have recently transitioned into not quite dating. After that night proves fine and without awkward incident—they keep to the edges and Harper barely spreads out in her sleep anyway while Abby naturally scrunches up cat-like—they talk it over briefly and agree to just keep doing that until they decide on a more permanent fix.

After about a week they decide to rearrange the living room so it’s possible to easily set up their fancy sofa bed in the evenings. They’d gotten a pretty high quality one a month into living together at Harper’s insistence anyway, so they could be better hosts to visiting out-of-town friends. Abby takes the couch bed voluntarily; she’s a lot smaller and has more experience couch surfing anyway. It feels a bit like being fresh out of undergrad again but in infinitely nicer digs and with fewer roommates. Besides, the wide openness of the living room feels nice, calming. It’s a comforting atmosphere on nights when she finds herself lying awake just thinking about everything that’s happened until her eyes and brain are too heavy to focus.

//

They get into a new rhythm. They can joke more now, even about some of the more absurd aspects of their Christmas farce. 

Abby notices Harper is still hesitant about any casual physical contact and decides to encourage her to let that go—by goading her into it, naturally. So the first time Harper willingly initiates touch after her first night back is when she punches Abby in the arm. 

“There’s something I still don’t understand…” Abby tells her one morning, voice grave and troubled, “...Does your family _not_ understand what orphans are? Like is it a rich people thing or do they think all orphans are trapped in the 1800s? I’m just really curious—” 

The sudden punch is far from angry but it’s got some weight to it, is genuine. 

“Ow! I’m _serious!_ Your mom thought I’d never had a _Christmas tree_! I have zero doubt they thought my tragic orphan background is what turned me to a life of mall crime.” 

When Harper snort-chuckles and pulls a chagrined face at yet more of her parents’ denseness, Abby grins, laughing, and returns the arm punch lightly. After Harper’s embarrassed groan has died down they share a cheerful look and a few moments of companionable silence. It feels like they’ve taken another small step together.

//

Abby’s break ends and she’s back to Carnegie Mellon—writing, research, and teaching. It feels good to have work and studies to keep her occupied again. Or it does until she remembers that grad school is a self-imposed endless marathon of keeping your A-game on all the time. 

She does love the work though, as much of it as there is. It's what she's been building up to for the past decade of her life. Having two professor parents had given her an uncommon early insight into the world of academia and teaching. Libraries and lecture halls and people who can talk an hour or more at a time so passionately and thoroughly about their expertise are what Abby had grown up on.

It feels good, getting closer to her dream every day, following footprints her parents had left for her. This term her teaching assistantship has her working with Prof. Ramos on _Modern Movements in the American Decorative Arts_ for underclassmen and _Medieval To Modern: Textiles and Glass from Middle Ages to Arts and Crafts_ for majors. 

She lectures Mondays and Wednesdays and holds office hours twice weekly, usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays she reserves for her dissertation and any papers she's currently working on for publication, and on many nights of the week she'll spend some time grading exams or papers in PJs.

Scribbly pages of her small moleskine are dual color coded to keep her as up to date on Riley’s schedule as her own. She’s got it on her phone calendar as well since Riley keeps everything on hers and just shares access to it, but Abby’s always scratching thoughts and reminders out in that half planner half brain catch-all anyway. Some of her most promising research or writing ideas come when she’s in the middle of stuff like cooking or going out and those thoughts shoot straight from brain to hand, sparking an itch to physically write them out. So she’s always got a pen and notebook on her; she likes the tactile feel of jotting things down and it’s handy whenever someone nearby asks to borrow a pen.

There’s barely blank space on the pages where she tracks both schedules, between the black ink denoting her own time on campus or nose-deep in research and the sprawling blue of Riley’s grueling eighty work hours a week. It’s daunting every time she remembers how much worse all those twenty hour shifts and nights on call are to live through than to just see on paper. But visualizing their schedules at least helps in figuring out when they can talk, when they need to wish each other extra luck for a dissertation milestone or an extra long shift ahead. 

Abby’s doing her best to offer Riley support long-distance. She’s far from being a fellow doctor and far from Baltimore but she wants so much to have some way to tangibly make residency more bearable. Taking a page from her undergrad years when her high school friends had scattered to colleges coast to coast, Abby decides to resurrect her tradition of putting together care packages.

Resident doctors likely may have different needs than nineteen year olds, so she’s not totally sure how to tackle this task going into it. Some treats are always good though, right? Maybe not family sized bags of candy, because who knows if that would put too much strain on someone already testing the limits of how little an amount of sleep, food, and peace a human body can survive under. But some home baked sweets are comforting and show some thought.

Unsure what sort of home baked goods Riley prefers, she ends up making a batch each of thumbprint cookies, brownies, and lemon squares, each of which she sets aside a portion of to cover her bases for the treats section of her package.

On her way home from campus one day she picks up one of those eye masks you can stick in the freezer, figuring they might be nice for headaches, as well as a few bags of tea, cocoa mix, and dark chocolate covered espresso beans from her favorite small specialty foods store. 

Just before taping the box up to bring to the post office, she grabs the top sheet of a nearby memo pad to scribble a quick note to slip in with her various offerings. Something simple.

 _Hey Riley_ —

_Figured somebody should really help keep you alive while you’re keeping other people alive. I couldn’t decide what to bake you so uh, I baked everything? But let me know what you like and I’ll send some more!_

_I thought about coffee too (there’s a great roastery nearby) but I wasn’t sure if you do whole or ground beans? So for now you can just pop espresso beans, that’s gotta be some kind of boost right?_

_Hang in there bud! You know I’m rooting for you out here. You’re honestly a powerhouse but seriously, don’t burn out. I’d hate to lose you._

— _Abby_

Satisfied, she quickly finishes up the packaging, shrugs into sneakers and a jacket, and tucks the box under an arm with a small smile on her face as she pops out the door to swing by the post office before meeting John for catch-up coffee. 

//

_R: Hey_

_R: This might be the best box I’ve ever gotten in the mail. I was just thinking about keeling over the other day but I think the lemon squares actually restarted my pulse. I had no idea you were secretly kickass at baking, Abs. I don’t discriminate between baked goods so whatever you feel like making lay it on me. These are legit going to carry me emotionally for the next two weeks._

_R: Love whole bean espresso but tragically I don’t got that kind of life energy. I lack a grinder and live off drip coffee I pass through an IV._

_R: Anyway I love everything in this box. Thanks for lookin’ out, friend_

Abby feels her cheeks stretch from how wide her smile is when these messages pop up on her phone. She immediately jots down to grab ground dark roast next time she’s in the area and to pick a couple more baking recipes so she can grab any missing ingredients.

A week and a half later she receives her own box from Baltimore. Inside: a classic collegiate style crewneck—soft, a nice grey-blue, with _Hopkins_ in white across the chest and the seal under that—a tin of Old Bay Seasoning with a sticky note instructing to sprinkle it on fries, and a rubik’s cube with a different van Gogh on each face.

Setting the cube and seasoning on the coffee table, she shrugs into the sweater and immediately feels warm in more than the physical. There’s no way this isn’t going to quickly become a well-worn favorite in her sweater rotation. It’s even softer on the inside than the outside, it’s warm but the fabric’s the right breathability for layering, and having it on feels like a tangible anchor to some feeling steadily blooming inside her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!! I am so happy folks liked my first chapter and I'm super grateful to everyone who left comments. I love hearing from you!
> 
> Many of you mentioned you appreciated my approach to Harper and the aftermath of Abby and Harper's relationship. I'm very glad to hear that! This is absolutely a fic centered on Riley and Abby, but I was really interested in exploring more of the emotions, introspection, and consequences that might follow their disaster Christmas. I have plenty of thoughts I might discuss more on Tumblr, but the big talk this chapter pretty much sets the tone for how I plan to transition the emotional center of this story more fully from the immediate aftermath of Christmas into the ongoing development of Abby and Riley's connection. 
> 
> If you missed their chats, don't worry; plenty more of that to come! I'm pretty excited about the next chapter actually, I had a lot of fun writing it. Expect some significant relationship developments, some life changes, more snail mail, and for me to maybe start earning that Mature rating. Most likely will have Ch 3 up later this week!
> 
> I appreciate every read, kudo, and bookmark and I love every comment! So please let me know what you think and how you liked it :]
> 
> If you'd like to hit me up for any reason, I'm reachable at a bunch of internet spots listed in my profile. @somonastic or just somonastic on Tumblr, Twitter, and IG.
> 
> Have a nice day friend, and I hope you eat some nice home-baked treats or comfort food pasta, even if it is a disgrace to Italy.


	3. Seems like it'd be really soft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Imagine trying to do this by steamboat, or horse.

She and Harper are doing much better. They’ve come a long way, farther than she’d expected in the past three months. In the end, it doesn’t feel quite as painfully like falling out of love with someone as it does just falling back into pleasant solid friendship. 

After they'd first locked eyes and shook hands over the buffet table at a friend’s holiday party, they had tumbled pretty quickly into romance. It’s a story they’ve summarized dozens of times to new friends and coworkers—their quintessential meet-cute, how instantly their connection sparked, how they had kept inviting each other on essentially dates until they officially started calling them that, how the months after that were picnics in the park, flowers for Valentine’s, and every bright thing you dream about in a relationship.

Looking back on that, it’s actually nice now to just be friends. They’d gone from acquaintances to sneaking makeouts into any situation like blissful first-love teens. They'd crushed every couple milestone. “Abby and Harper” became such a given that their friends often jokingly suggested increasingly silly portmanteaus to save time referring to their combined unit. The building of their friendship had always been parallel to the dazzling sweep of their romance.

Not all important relationships are romantic. You can love and care about and want the best for someone without dating or marrying them. That seems obvious now after letting their once fiercely tight grip on their unstoppable romance fall gently away to reveal some core truths about what they are to each other. They've been through a lot together, most of it very happy. They'll always mean something to each other even if that something isn't soulmates. And ending a romantic relationship isn’t a failure, especially once you manage to start sincerely believing it isn’t a failure. 

Harper, who had never really developed close queer friendships, remarks on how new this dynamic feels for her and she finds herself embracing it with nervous excitement. After moving out of her parents’ she’d never lived fully closeted day to day but she revels in how much _better_ it feels to be working towards something real, something more than walking a tightrope trying not to drop a lot of fragile pretty ideals. 

Steadfast emotionally vulnerable queer friendships have been a huge source of joy and support in Abby’s life, the solidarity between her and John by now something they both know they can always depend on. Plus, Riley’s allyship over the holidays had saved her from further emotional deterioration and has since then been growing into one of her strongest, most treasured friendships. So she’s more than happy celebrating Harper’s self discoveries along with her. After some embarrassed hesitance on Harper’s part she even finds herself acting as almost a part-time counselor Harper turns to while she’s re-navigating her queerness.

When Harper approaches her in the living room one mid-March evening with hands fidgeting and tells her she’s been tentatively putting herself out there on some dating apps and that she has dinner and a movie lined up with a cute dance instructor later that week, it’s remarkably easy for Abby to grin in response and insist Harper come over and show her pics. Harper laughs and joins her on the couch, already pulling up her favorite shots they’ve exchanged including several that feature the woman’s energetic Australian cattle dog. 

They end up spending the rest of the night polishing off most of a bottle of red and determining the perfect first date appropriate but still fun eye-catching outfit for Harper’s big night. 

//

Winter shows its first signs of thawing with April. Chilled air has lost the worst of its bite and rains wash out much of the snow so that Abby and Harper need to keep their slush-crusted boots on the rubber mat by the doorway for a week. They gradually seem to arrive in sync at the feeling that it’s time for them to move on from their shared apartment. Abby’s been wondering how to broach this subject for a few weeks now when Harper reveals she started putting her resume out there again around a month ago. Despite how showboating Ted’s professional praise for Harper had been, her work for the _Post-Gazette_ speaks for itself and really is brilliant. She has little trouble garnering several attractive offers with other respectable publications and in the end, she accepts an exciting new position with the _Inquirer_. 

Following her amicable divorce and joint custody arrangements at the start of the year, Sloane had admitted she'd been feeling stagnant in the luxury experience vessels business and had decided to step back into the ever-challenging world of law. (She made it perfectly clear that this choice was for herself, not to win back Ted’s long retracted approval. Harper and Jane are staunchly supportive.) She’s since joined up with an up-and-coming Philadelphia firm started by one of her hotshot law school frenemies. Eyes set on making partner within the year, Sloane’s settled into a spacious twelfth floor condo—both her and Eric having elected to sell the house and find new places in town within twins-sharing distance of each other—that Harper will be moving into as she starts the _Inquirer_ job.

Riley is unsurprised when Abby fills her in on this development.

“Yeah I always thought if the two of them ever got their shit sorted and stopped aiming for each other’s throats they’d be an unholy terror of a power duo. With how intensely they always competed?”

She whistles low, both of them firsthand witnesses to the devastation the eldest and youngest Caldwell daughters can wreak upon each other and everything in their paths.

“It honed them both into total killing machines who can probably only be defeated by each other. So god help whatever sucker messes with either of them now.”

Abby agrees wholeheartedly.

“Better late than never,” Riley adds in conclusion. “You love to see sisterly bonding.”

After a fond run at sharing a home for several romantic months and a few more platonic ones, it’s bittersweet for Abby and Harper to say their last goodbyes to the apartment. The process feels right for spring though, a seasonal cleaning for a chapter of their lives, a new beginning with promising signs of growth. They make efficient work of divvying the place’s contents—items go first to whoever either purchased or used them more, unwanted items are set aside for donations, and gifts like the simple gold necklace Harper had surprised Abby with on her birthday will remain with the gift recipient. After all, they were given with a steady love that is still there no matter how it’s changed forms.

//

Abby finds her own place (much reduced in both size and rent)—a little studio closer to the university. The new space and solo lifestyle are vaguely reminiscent of undergrad in some ways but way less gross. Although arguably less sleep, given the ongoing challenges of doctoral candidacy. She and John had considered becoming roommates for a hot minute but decided against it. Despite being ride-or-die besties, John loves having his own space to freely roam while wearing only a luxurious robe and to quietly ditch his more grating gentlemen guests until they show themselves out. Anyway, Abby feels it might be good for her ongoing post-relationship journey to embrace being fully on her own for a while. 

A fresh new space to make her own is exciting and she eagerly nests into it. Some aspects about living on her own are quite nice. She hangs art, arranges knick knacks, and drags John around to a dozen thrift and antique stores for cute pieces of small vintage furniture and decor.

Sometimes she does kind of miss having someone around. She sees John as regularly as ever though. She also keeps up with texting and calling Riley, who continues to be put through the ringer by residency. When possible they’ve taken to just keeping each other on vidchat even while decompressing, researching, or grading papers. It’s a pleasant comfort and camaraderie, feeling each other’s presence. 

She even manages to start using nicknames for Riley only _half_ accidentally. 

“So what’s new Ri—” she starts one call off, fully prepared to deliberately end on that one syllable but finding herself instantly nervous seeing Riley smile at her until she’s lingered too long on the vowel and finds herself finishing awkwardly, “—iillloo....Rilo..?”

She blinks three times in a row. Riley looks unbothered, keeps smiling.

“You okay, Abs?”

Abby sighs, deciding to come clean. 

“Yeah no totally. Just uh,” she scratches at the back of her neck, “I’ve kind of been trying to work up the nerve to get used to using a nickname for you?”

She sees the pieces click together in Riley’s eyes as her smile brightens, charmed.

“I’d be honored if you wanted to have a nickname for me. You don’t have to be nervous, you know? I’m not gonna like, critique you on it. I started calling you Abs because it just felt right.”

Remnants of her nerves trickle even into Abby’s relieved chuckle. 

“Regrettably, nervous tends to just be part of the deal with me even when not required. I was going for ‘Ri’ just now I guess but apparently ‘Rilo’ is what happened instead? I’m sorry, I don’t know if anyone calls you that.” 

“You can call me Rilo if you want,” Riley says, lips quirked in a slanted smile. “I’m into it. I mean good band, Rilo Kiley, so there’s that. Doesn’t matter if nobody calls me it yet.”

It’s not lost on her, that detail that Riley is giving her permission to call her something nobody else does even if it’s a something resulting from a verbal slip of chest flutters that still haven’t dissipated, only gotten even more fluttery at this unexpected turn.

“Alright then,” Abby grins back. “So, what’s new on your end, Rilo?” 

//

Riley sends her an adorable set of crocheted cacti in small terra cotta pots that she found on Etsy as an apartment warming present. They live happily on the shelf by the window nearest her bed and their cheerful colors and plushness are a pleasant sight first thing in the morning.

Abby maintains her monthly care package tradition, changing up what she tucks into the box each time. Some snacks are a given along with at least one manner of homemade treat. With summer rolling around she starts incorporating some lighter fruit-based baked goods in with the richer chocolatey sweets. John reaps the benefits of all her experimental baking leftovers, occasionally snagging some to pass off as thoughtful offerings to clients and colleagues. She avoids including superfluous stuff or gag gifts because what is someone who's constantly out working or home exhausted going to do with unusable detritus? And lastly, she always tops the collection off with a handwritten note. 

“Dude, honestly I'm campaigning for your canonization as patron saint of care packages,” Riley tells her after opening one of said packages live on their video call. 

Hesitation tugs at the corners of her mouth as she places the container of cinnamon chocolate chip cookies, cranberry orange scones, and passion fruit window cookies on her desk.

“These are really awesome, Abs. I'm stoked every time one shows up. I'm sorry I haven't been returning the favor.” 

Abby rushes to disagree with that thought. 

“Oh my god, no don't even worry about it! You're honestly way busier than me. Like it's no big.” 

Riley doesn't seem fully convinced and smiles knowingly.

“You make it sound like you're not up at 2AM several times a week over your dissertation.” 

“Sure, but that's going pretty okay actually. I met with Prof. Chamanara just this morning and we're feeling strong on the section I just finished drafting!” 

“ _Hell_ yeah champ. Well done!” 

"Besides I love making care packages, seriously. I enjoy it and if it helps keep you fed or brighten your day or whatever I’m completely happy to keep doing it. That’s good enough for me! Think of it as me giving you a pat on the back when I’m not actually around.”

“Fair enough,” Riley accepts with a short laugh, smiling. “They’re kind of lifesavers and I love receiving them so far be it from me to reject your generosity.”

//

Abby feels a familiar jolt of eagerness when she gets a letter from Riley in the mail a week later. Just like when she’d opened the box containing her newest favorite sweater, her now half-full Old Bay tin, and her hopelessly unsolved but still beautiful rubik’s cube, Abby is thrilled at this surprise bit of mail’s arrival. She’s always loved getting paper mail and can’t remember the last time she’s had any from a real person and not bill automations and paper marketing.

She opens the envelope and by the end of her first readthrough is surprised how personal and sweet the letter is. It’s like...a _real_ letter. Sincere, thought out, nowhere awkwardly padded with vague pleasantries or boring surface level updates. She’s not sure she’s actually ever gotten a real letter as an adult, not something much more than the light notes she sends with care packages.

“So ah,” Abby begins the next time they talk, “this letter is amazing, to be honest. Really, I loved reading it. I haven’t enjoyed a letter this much since my grandma’s letters. Did you just decide to sit down and write me a genuine entire letter on a whim?”

Riley shrugs and nods.

“I’ve always been a letter writer. It’s how Harper and I started leaving locker love notes for each other back in school. I wrote letters and notes all the time as a kid and Harper loved getting them from me way before our friendship ever turned romantic.”

Oh. The idea of a tiny Riley sitting at a desk in her childhood room and carefully writing out a letter to Harper about whatever young kids think about is very cute. 

“For obvious reasons, I stepped back from letter writing for the most part once our friendship was over. But I dunno, I’ve been kind of thinking about picking it back up again. Not to be really dramatic and brooding but when I’m totally physically wiped out it tends to put me in that kind of half-asleep pensive headspace at weird hours where you just keep thinking, you know? Letter writing is a good outlet for that.”

“Ah, yeah I get that feeling of brain restlessness. It's nice yours comes out in the form of good old-fashioned letters, Rilo.”

“And you _love_ snail mail I’m assuming, based on your grandfatherly dedication to all things old-timey, so this is symbiotic for both of us. I get all my weird thoughts out and you get outdated physical text messages in the slowest way possible.” 

Abby laughs.

“First of all, it could still be way slower, like if it had to be carried via steamboat or horse or something. Second, _you’re_ the one doing the actual writing, which makes _you_ the grandpa now.”

In her next care package Abby includes a nice blue fountain pen, a small bottle of blue-black ink, and some cute sets of smooth stationery from a charming local shop she always passes on the way to grab groceries and has been wanting to check out anyway. 

When the kind shop owner boxes and wraps her selection in onion-thin patterned light purple paper and asks, “For someone special, huh?" she grins to her eyes and answers, “Yeah, she really is.” 

//

By this point their interactions are very multimedia, spanning several different channels of communication. There’s texting, which started it all; calls, sometimes voicemails left as little greetings, reminders, check-ins; video calls when they can manage it; and letters several pages long every week or two. It reminds Abby a little of long ago summers that hadn’t been spent researching and writing but _had_ involved excitedly keeping in contact with friends however she could. When it isn’t so hot she needs to keep the AC running, she likes lying eyes closed by an open window at night while on the phone, hearing the various city summer nights sounds layered behind Riley’s familiar voice.

Riley’s letters continue to be sincere, beautifully written, vulnerable. Abby is a little in awe every time she reads them. When she gets one, she doesn’t slice the envelope open until she gets a chance to sit down uninterrupted for long enough to read the letter in one go. She’s never sure what she’s going to read since there’s no continuity from letter to letter. 

Sometimes it’s a memory from some other point in Riley’s life. Sometimes it’s just whatever she’s thinking about at the moment. Sometimes background about an album she listened to a lot junior year of high school that got her through some heavy bouts of depression. Abby keeps them all in a drawer of her nightstand; sometimes when hanging out in bed waiting to fall asleep she’ll pick one at random to re-read. 

After that first letter the dynamic between them across all communication shifts. It’s not dramatic, exactly, but the change is definitely there. They never announce it but as openly as they'd talked before, they find themselves in deeply intimate conversations much more often now. It feels equally as natural to chat idly about what they last ate for dinner as it does to open up about their nervousness for what comes next after finishing this current phase of training for their dream jobs.

They’re so used to talking at this point. They expect each other’s presence in some form as part of their day to day. It’s starting to feel more and more odd and lonely to not be anywhere geographically near each other. John notes that this is why he doesn’t do long-distance dating—that and there’s so much more pressure and effort you have to put into sending spicy pics of yourself. When he says this, Abby’s mind goes to how natural and how comforting it is now to see Riley an utter mess of a human being after an eighteen hour shift, in rumpled PJs with hair wild from being tied back, noticeably sleepy and full of gaping-mouth yawns. 

But anyway, John’s commentary doesn’t apply since Abby and Riley are not dating. They’re not! But, well...she can’t a hundred percent truthfully say they’re... _not_ steadily approaching something that could certainly, if you squint at it, be reasonably called adjacent to dating. Along with the more vulnerable intimate shift in their conversations, there’s also been a whole ‘nother type of shift that Abby’s finding increasingly impossible to ignore. 

They’re flirting. 

It’s definitely flirting. It may be a while since she’s had to flirt with someone she wasn’t already dating but she can at least remember enough to recognize that they have meandered into some decidedly flirtatious territory. Or, well, Riley’s tone when they talk has become pretty damn unmistakably inviting with growing frequency and Abby has developed an embarrassing habit of tripping face-first into painfully obvious displays of thirsty gay panic.

One night she accepts a video call from Riley. When the call window expands, Abby just sits there staring at how her long dark wet hair, catching shine from the only light in the room, is currently slicked straight back at the crown and trails down to the side over one shoulder. She swallows hard and has just a fraction enough awareness to register feeling grateful that Riley seems to still be fiddling with her call settings.

“Hey Abs, sorry it took me so long,” Riley greets, settling into her seat. “Made the mistake of flopping onto the bed when I got out of the shower and it took me fifteen minutes to will my body to drag me out of bed.” 

“Plus I haven’t done laundry in a century so _that_ was a whole struggle finding some remotely presentable clothes to crawl into so I don't just flash you while you tell me all about the response you got from _Artibus et Historiae_.”

“I don’t mind,” escapes from Abby’s mouth before her brain has a chance to intervene.

Riley looks endlessly amused and is just barely bothering to try for a straight face. 

“Shit—what you _wear_ I mean! Obviously. Y-you can wear whatever, I don’t judge. Go for it! You look fantastic no matter what.”

The internal groaning vibrates through Abby’s entire being as she watches something flash in Riley’s eyes, her head tilted to one side and an absurdly satisfied smirk on her lips.

“Aw, thank you Abs. You too.”

“Thank you,” she ekes out, muffled by the palms she’s burying her face and squeezing her eyes into in a futile attempt to vanish.

She’s better than this, she swears to gay Jesus. John’s going to laugh himself out of his chair and flat onto his ass when she confesses this exchange to him later. Riley’s already laughing delightedly at her, although the sound kind of comforts rather than stings her. If she’s having a blast, Abby doesn’t really have it in her to feel dumb for long.

Obviously Riley has been a babe from the start, _obviously._ Stumbling into her very awkwardly after exiting the restaurant restroom and being introduced to her as Harper’s platonic orphan roommate (and not even a little bit believed) had in no way been a remotely sexy situation. But of course Riley’s hot. Her swagger when she’d first walked up to them, looking back on it and blocking out the agonizing context, had been really hot and really gay—confident strides, thumbs hooked in belt loops, looking at them expectantly. 

To be honest, it’s almost been a little hard for Abby to keep eye contact with Riley from the start. Again, she’d been in a relationship and in no way in a headspace to think about it from her current perspective, but Riley’s eyes are...kind of intense. Probably most people would at a glance characterize Riley’s look as neutral, even dry or deadpan. Those eyes seem like much more than that to Abby though. 

They’re...smart? Clever—like Abby’s always got the sense that just from looking at her, Riley had observed a lot more than the average person. She’d sized up Abby’s closeted Harper dilemma pretty quickly and had seemed to read Abby’s emotions easily when they were together. Her eyes can be really kind also, empathetic, as they had been while listening to Abby pour her heart out and doing her best to offer some insight and reassurance. Even now, pixelated on a screen, her gaze is really something. 

Sometimes when conversation has lulled a bit, Abby notices Riley looking at her. It’s hard to say what exactly she might be thinking. Abby finds her a lot more expressive than strangers might, but that isn’t to say Riley’s easy to read. She seems...thoughtful? Like she’s contemplating something, a decision maybe. It’s a little similar to the look she gets when asked a particularly challenging _“Would you rather?”_ It also looks a little like when Abby’s eating a nice home cooked dinner and Riley is absolutely starving after running an entire day on little nutritional value. That is to say, her look is fucking hungry.

Which circles back around to the flirting thing.

She wouldn’t say she’s gotten used to Riley’s flirting, since she keeps being reduced to stammering responses, ducking her head to hide her blush, or just blinking and spacing out while trying to reboot her brain every time it happens.

But it’s common now for Riley to casually say stuff like, “New shirt for that department barbecue, Abs? I like it. The fit’s really good on you. Love to see a woman really pulling off a bold neckline. Maybe don’t wear it in front of students though if you want them to pay attention to the lecture.”

Sometimes it’s a remark on her hair like, “Have you noticed you run a hand through your hair a lot? No don’t worry though, the tousled look is perfect on you. If I had your hair I’d probably keep running my hands through it too. It looks really good pushed back like this by the way.”

Other times she just sits there listening intently to Abby explaining whatever she’s been up to or thinking about while eating one of her care package sweets very slowly. She looks completely focused and attentive to their conversation while doing it, probably more attentive than Abby even is while speaking at the time considering how impossible it is to not watch every slight movement of Riley’s mouth with rapt fascination—a glimpse of white teeth biting into soft baked pumpkin dough, tongue tip darting out for a millisecond at a small smudge of chocolate against the corner of her mouth, lips pliantly moving and changing shape around deliberate chewing motions.

That has to be intentional right? Chewing cookies is not sexy. It’s munching a snack—completely non-sensual and normal, strictly a byproduct of base biological function and sweet tooth cravings. Which is why it’s so frustrating to be unbearably turned on just thinking about what it’s like watching Riley do that. 

Abby finds herself a mix of still a little confused but also excited. She can feel herself wanting to respond in kind when Riley flirts with her. Eventually she does flirt back as best she can, which seems to make Riley grin and sometimes arch one excellent eyebrow. And then that just serves as more fuel for her to flirt back. It’s a whole cycle now.

Just when Abby starts to get her sea legs for flirting back as the city’s sparse greenspace turns autumnally warm hued, she hits a fucking iceberg that almost seems to come completely out of nowhere like she's the Titanic enjoying its maiden voyage. 

In keeping with how they’d never called direct attention to their increasingly vulnerable conversations, they’ve never talked _about_ the flirting. It’s just another element added to their unique relationship that hadn’t required a discussion before becoming routine.

So it’s an absolute bucket of cold water to the face when one average September night they’re on the phone mirroring each other lying in bed states apart and Riley’s voice right in her ear, apropos of nothing, says:

“Ever have phone sex?”

Abby chokes on air, drops her phone, wheezes while clumsily picking it back up and putting it to her ear. 

“Have I _what_??”

“Y’know. Phone-boning. Remote sex achieved by talking to one another over the phone and using your imagination real hard. Telephone calls of a sexual nature.”

“I can’t say I have ever had phone sex, no.” 

Without skipping a beat Riley replies, “Would you like to?” 

It would be stupid to ask if she means the implied “with me.” She obviously means with her. Maybe it shouldn’t be as shocking as it is given all time they’ve clocked into the flirtation department but Abby’s heart is trying to jump right up her throat and she’s definitely wide awake now. 

“You...you mean, like, right now?”

Riley just hums an affirmative. “Sure. Not to be way full of myself but I feel like you’re attracted to me and would be down to try something of this nature if we were in the same place right now, yeah?”

Abby doesn’t say any words because what is she even supposed to say, but there’s no point trying to pretend like Riley’s assertion isn’t true. She tries to hum her confirmation as well but it comes out more like a squawk.

“Sweet. I am also super attracted to you and if we were in the same place right now I would be on my way to your apartment to have my scandalous way with you. Actually no, I am fucking _Night of the Living Dead_ right now and in no way safe to drive so you’d have to be the booty call answerer.” 

“Huh?”

“The point is we both want sex. With each other. But we’re 271 miles away from each other—”

“Did you actually look that up?”

“—so there’s no meeting up right now, and probably not in the immediate future. And I can’t speak for you but I have been horny as all hell for you this entire fucking week.”

Oh my god. There it is. There’s no misreading that statement at all. 

“Wow I...wow I’m—you—” Breathe. Chill out. Try again. “That’s….that is quite...a statement there. Are you… This isn’t just some kind of insane unbearable sexual frustration side effect of resident life, is it? I mean are you sure phone sex is the thing you really want? With me? It’s probably a lot more convenient to hook up with one of the other residents, right?”

Oh god fuck. That didn’t come out right at all.

“Okay Abs, you are having a gay panic attack and honestly? It’s okay, I figured there was a good chance you might. I hundred percent in no way want to pressure you into this. But I am completely serious about everything I said. I do want to have phone sex. With you, yes. Just you.” 

_Oh thank god._ Good, this is good.

“Besides, I’d never sleep with any of this bunch of sweaty nerds, c’mon Abs. ‘Don’t shit where you eat’ and all, right?”

Abby frowns. “I have _never_ enjoyed that saying.”

“Yeah it’s disgusting,” Riley agrees. “But anywho, I’m pretty sure you’re mostly freaking out because you are into it and you’re thinking about saying yes but you’ve been telling yourself that, despite blatantly throwing ourselves at each other for a month now, you might have just been imagining or misinterpreting it.”

Again, Abby is impressed by how much Riley notices. And also she feels a little bashful now that it’s confirmed that she’s an utter fucking lesbian disaster who cannot lie and the dangerous combination of those things means she is doomed to forever be horny on main when she would love to be smooth and charismatic instead. 

“So,” Riley brings her back to the moment, “I want you to know you’re totally reading it right; we are flirting with each other, you are not an idiot. Well like, only a little, because you try so hard to convince yourself people aren’t that into you, you beautiful hot gay dumbass.”

Um wow, hey.

“Are you sure your degree wasn’t in Psych? What are you, a mind-reader on top of being a doctor, do they teach you that in med school now?”

Riley laughs. “No, babe. I just know you by now.”

 _That_ does something to Abby’s poor stressed out physiology too. The thought of being known so well, being seen. Being wanted for that.

So maybe it isn’t that sudden. Maybe they do both know what they’re doing. Maybe it’s okay to try something new with someone she trusts and likes and undeniably wants. 

“Does it help if I point out that I’m a doctor, so you should listen to me? We’re both stressed and horny as fuck, this could literally kill us if we don’t do something about it.”

“Is that an official diagnosis then?” 

“Absolutely. I can show you the lab results later. Profile all checks out.”

She snort-laughs. “So uh...what do we even… How do we start this?”

“ _Those_ are the kinds of great questions I want to be hearing. Well, what are you wearing?”

“Is that really how people start this?” Abby says, skeptical. “Same thing you’re wearing I assume: some old band camp shirt and gym shorts as pajamas.”

“Ah, yes. That classic teen oboist irresistible sex appeal. Magnetic. Timeless.”

She hears herself let out an embarrassed groan.

“Alright,” Riley says, “maybe pajamas aren’t enough to get you immersed for a first go-around. How about I decide what you’re wearing? It’s really more for my benefit anyway. You can pick what I’m wearing.”

“Okay.”

“Cool. That gigantic chunky weave white cable knit sweater you wore last Thursday.”

“ _Wow_ , really? Geez you had that locked and loaded.”

Despite there being no audible evidence, Abby is pretty sure Riley shrugs at this.

“I’m a woman of refined tastes and I know what I want.”

“Sure, works for me. What el—”

“Nothing else.”

Abby chokes on absolutely nothing for the second time in ten minutes. 

“ _What_ — _!!”_

“Ah-ah,” Riley tsks, “no questioning or critiquing my call, bud. Totally legal for me to fantasize about you being the Platonic ideal of simultaneously stupidly adorable and absolutely smoking hot. Sweater only, otherwise you're naked. Your turn, babe.”

“Alright fair, fair. Uhh, so...I guess you’re wearing…”

“Don’t overthink it. I know you’ve thought about it, what’s your gut say?”

Her gut is indeed about as quick as Riley’s, even if she’s feeling more than a bit bashful about it right now. Why is this so nerve wracking already? Does that thing about the absence of a sense heightening the remaining ones apply to phone sex? Is she in over her head?

“Matching black silk lingerie set—a little lace but not too frilly, that velvet suit jacket you wore on Christmas Eve, slim tie worn loose.”

She forces it all out in one breath before she can second guess it.

“Attagirl,” Riley is definitely grinning. “And where are we right now?”

“Here,” Abby answers, without hesitation this time.

“Pittsburgh?” 

She shakes her head even if Riley can’t see it. “My apartment, together. The bed.”

Her imagination must be catching up finally and she feels her nerves ebbing away as the words come out on their own.

“I lectured on Byzantine mosaics in the morning, spent a few hours after that on citations for that Celtic scrollwork on bronze helmets paper I’m submitting for publication next week. I made soba for dinner tonight so when you got back from your shift you didn’t need to heat anything up. It was mild out today and it’s raining now, but not a lot. Just enough you can hear the sound against the windows. You took a shower while I loaded the dishes and put away the leftovers. We’re in bed now, just the lamp in the corner’s on. Low light.”

Riley is quiet for several moments, save the steady sound of her breathing. Just as Abby starts to wonder if that was maybe too heavy on domestic detail, too light on sexy fantasy, and is trying to figure out how to walk it back and suggest Riley pick their setting instead, she hears her quietly clear her throat on the other end.

“Did you tweak the sauce?”

No objection on the grounds of scarce seductive details, no comment on the fact that it is downright absurd for them to be lying next to each other in bed dressed in a huge sweater—styled totally commando—and some fancy lingerie paired with a slick blazer and necktie. 

Abby grins. “Yeah... Yeah, trying a new brand of mirin out.”

“Nice. It’s bomb shit.” 

“Thanks.”

“I missed you today. Pretty sure I processed like eight thousand slides so just ignore the ocular lens indent around my eye. It’ll go away.”

“I’m sure everyone who consulted with you today enjoyed seeing that,” Abby chuckles. “I missed you too. I thought about you a lot...”

“Yeah? Do you often think about me when you’re in the middle of scholarly pursuits, Professor?”

Her heart rate is picking up so fast and it feels like she can hear it pumping against the inside of her brain. She takes some deep breaths, forces down an audible gulp. 

“All the time…”

“Good. What do you think about?”

“What you’re doing. How you’re feeling. How nice it’ll be to see you later, to have you home and do whatever we feel like. Talk, watch dumb shows. This…”

“This..?”

“Lying next to you. Breathing the same air as you. I—” A breath catches in her throat as the longing for this to be real overcomes her. “I want to be near you. _Feel_ you. I want to get as close to you as a human can possibly get to another human.”

“Sounds good to me. Get ready to put that big sexy brain of yours to use. Don’t let it feel awkward, just try to relax into it. Concentrate on the sensations. I’m here with you.”

She concentrates. She’s here. Riley’s here. The space they create when they speak with each other is real; it always has been.

“I’m climbing on top of you,” Riley continues slowly. “Hands pressed into the mattress to either side of your head. No contact yet; just looking you over, taking you in. The sweater is really stupid adorable. You look ridiculously tiny in it.”

“Hey, rude. We’re like the same size.”

“Don’t worry, I’m into it. I weave my fingers into the knit. Then I put a hand at the hem right where it ends at the top of your thigh, just below your hips. My fingertips just barely graze you.”

Abby involuntarily inhales sharply. She’s sure Riley hears it and is probably pleased.

“Put your hand there. Picture it’s mine.”

She does.

“I’m trailing my fingers up now, super slowly. Just a little at a time.” 

She ghosts her own fingertips upward in time with Riley’s narration. 

“That’s far enough for now I think. I’ll wait just at the top of your false ribs for now.”

“I’m _sorry_ , my…? Let’s pretend it’s been a while since I was in tenth grade biology.”

“Just to the side of your breast, babe.”

“Oh my god. You didn’t warn me you’re a giant tease. You know you’re going to kill me before we’re done here and then how will you explain that to the medical board?”

“I’m just putting the ball back in your court, Abs. I recall you also having hands. Where are they?”

“Oh…” her mind races, remembering vividly the way Riley is currently dressed and positioned in her mind. “Um...one at your hip, resting right where it curves. The other at...uh, also...your ribs.”

Fuck, this is new. She should google tips when they’re not in the middle of this. 

“What do you feel when you touch me?”

She licks her lips, refocuses herself on the moment, her senses.

“You’re dried off by now but still warm from the shower, everywhere. I can feel it just...radiating from your skin.”

“Mhm,” she’s prompted from the other end to go on.

“I dip my hand under your jacket, across the small of your back. It’s so smooth here, your skin, the lining. Like silk. This is a _really_ nice jacket by the way babe, you’re really working it.”

“Thanks,” Riley replies, amused. “Nordstrom Rack. You can borrow it sometime, we’re about the same size anyway.”

Abby laughs before moving on.

“I grab onto both sides of your tie. I use them to pull you slowly closer, til your face is just above mine. What kind of soap do you use?”

“It’s rosemary mint body wash. Shampoo and conditioner are tea tree; I like the scalp tingles and smelling like herbs and fresh breath.”

“I press my cheek to yours, my nose at your neck just behind your ears. I can smell the scent when I breathe in. You smell amazing.”

She inhales deep through her nose, the sound it carries the only noise between them for a moment.

“And you? What’re your product scent preferences?” Riley asks after a pause.

“Ahh cypress, birch, pine, juniper. That sort of thing. There’s a lady here who makes these great soaps, the bar I’m on right now smells like black walnut and wood smoke.” 

Riley laughs. “Babe, those are some pretty Christmas-y smells.”

“Huh? Oh, I guess so. I dunno my family went camping a lot. I like smelling like a forest!”

She does. Those trees are around for year-round camping as much as for winter ambience! _Is_ there something of her weird relationship with Christmas at play there though? She _i_ _s_ hypothetically wearing a sweater at the moment. Harper had always tended towards floral scents like rose and gardenia which never felt quite like Abby’s personal scent profile, so she’d gone in a different but still nature-y direction when picking up her own toiletries supplies.

“Shh, it’s nice. I like your smell too. It’s calming.”

Abby releases a small breath of overthinking anxiety. It’s fine. It’s Riley, who has never genuinely judged her about anything to this point, including how many of the exact same henley in multiple colors she has in her dresser. It’s hard to find them in her size.

“Forests are very romantic and sensual. Why else would lumberjack be a whole genre of lesbian? You are the softest tiny butch.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she smiles, rolling her eyes. “Last I checked you still have me barely clothed under you. Were you doing anything with that or..?”

“I start lowering myself just slightly, bringing my hand by your breast up to the back of your neck instead, running my fingertips through the hair there. I’ve been thinking about feeling it. Seems like it’d be really soft back there.”

She brings a hand up to the nape of her neck, softly probes. Riley’s right. She hadn’t really noticed before but her hair is at its downiest in this spot normally hidden by the rest of her layers. Was this merely a good assumption? Had Riley somehow noticed during the limited time they’d spent in each other’s company?

“Huh...it is, you’re right.”

“Knew it. I keep my hand there, scratching lightly with my nails.”

She drags her nails feather-light across skin and downy hairs and a shiver runs through her.

“I shift my weight to my elbow, so I can lean all the way in. My lips are at your sternum now, your throat, just under your jaw. Do you feel them?”

“ _Yes,_ ” it’s strained. “They’re warm, soft…”

It’s far from the first time she’s imagined them.

“I would really like to kiss you now, if that’s cool with you.”

“God please, go for it.”

“Great,” she says, then softer, “close your eyes.”

She does. That simple change makes it surprisingly easy to sink into the fantasy. It doesn’t feel like just words through a phone, bounced off a satellite somewhere in space, to imagine the soft press of lips to hers. Maybe the fact that she’s spent considerable time thinking about this very thing for a while now helps with the realism.

She focuses on the sensations. Soft. Warm. The easy give when her lips press against Riley’s, the way the shapes conform to each other, like a perfect fit.

“Wow…” she whispers. 

She imagines a soft smile above her, not a grin, almost tender. 

“Me too,” Riley says.

“I would like to do that again,” Abby says, already imagining it.

It’s nearly automatic to narrate what she’s seeing in her brain, her hand gentle on Riley’s cheek, guiding her face back down. Tilting her own face just a bit so their noses slide next to each other, so she can push a little harder this time into the kiss. She barely notices she’s speaking at all now. 

She's not new to picturing the two of them like this, pressed close, burrowing into each other, taking hold of what's been kindling between them. But this isn't dreams tangled alone in sheets at night. Not brief longing flashes in the background of her mind when they talk. 

It turns out Riley being present with her as she works through these burning sensations is not zero-sum. It’s not just a binary of Riley being literally in front of her or being not there at all. There's something between the hollow lack of her occupying physical space beside Abby and the thrill of being able to reach out and feel the solidity of her mass, her warmth. 

It's this. It's the very real intimacy they'd kindled with a couple phone numbers exchanged and the solidarity of queer struggle then stoked for months with typed anecdotes, voices soft in each other's ears, looks across hundreds of miles, ink on paper, and sweets in boxes until the blaze of their meaning to one another was something they both kept warm by at their highest and lowest points. 

Knowing they both want this is everything. 

They speak their hands across the curves of each other. The fingertips at the angles of her clavicles and the jut of her hip bone and lower—at the spot where she’s most painfully unbearably turned on—they’re Riley’s fingertips and there’s genuine heat where they press. 

Everything Riley breathes out, murmurs into her, ripples from the shell of her ear into her brain, past the backs of her eyes, into her breath, into her nerve endings.

Riley's voice— _god_ just her low voice alone, urging her on, holding her back just a maddening stroke from completion before finally letting her have it—does it for her more than possibly anything ever has.

At the end of it they lie there in separate beds, eyes closed, listening to the rapid breaths between them even out. 

“So ah…” she breaks the quiet, voice rasping, and opens bleary eyes. “Was this a uh, purely physical thing or… Are you my girlfriend now, do you think?”

“Would you like me to be?”

“Yes.”

That's not even a question, hasn't been in months.

“Good,” Riley says firmly. “Me too.”

She closes her eyes again, the laughs from her chest more breath than voice, a truly satisfied grin on her lips. That answer is as filling as everything else they've just given each other and she hopes she never forgets feeling like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2020 is one of the worst of years, but it is the year I decided to finally attempt writing some.../looks around and quietly whispers: sexy sex. This scene isn't my first exactly (that's in a Witcher fic I keep writing but haven't posted any of yet) but it is definitely my first pass at writing phone sex so that was interesting and I hope you find it interesting?? Do not let it be said I experienced no growth in 2020. 
> 
> I continue to be grateful for all your thoughts and kind words. I really enjoy writing these characters. I love to know what things y'all notice, enjoy, or even have questions on. Any time I write I have spent ten million hours thinking way too much about characters and relationships and such so I love hearing and talking about that stuff!
> 
> I appreciate every read, kudo, and bookmark and I love every comment! So please let me know what you think and how you liked it :]
> 
> If you'd like to hit me up for any reason, I'm reachable at a bunch of internet spots listed in my profile: Tumblr, Twitter, IG, Ko-Fi. Generally go by (@)somonastic across the board.
> 
> Have a nice day friend, and I hope you're feeling appreciated and loved in your relationships this season, and that you give fruit-based desserts a chance. Please send panettone.


	4. Fuck the lonely underworld

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember how nice visiting people is? Remember what that's like? Someday we'll do that again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potential CW in case: Brief mention towards the end of a Baroque sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini titled The Rape of Proserpina. The sculpture itself is not explicit, the title referring to the kidnapping of Proserpina/Persephone by Pluto/Hades in mythology. The reference is in an art context (specifically a detail the piece is famous for: the realism of the carved marble) and no sexual assault happens or is depicted in here.

It’s been ten whole months—nearly a year—since she was last in PIT. She hasn’t had reason to stand by these doors since she’d met Harper here after last Christmas. What a complete one-eighty this is, emotionally, from last time.

She can feel her pulse thumping away in her ribcage as she tries not to look too jittery to passerby, stood leaning against a metal railing, bouncing on the heels of her scuffed old boots.

Then she spots her. 

Riley waves at her from across the crowd of other airport-goers milling about. They start making their way to each other and meet in the middle in no time, crashing together. Abby throws her arms up around Riley’s neck and feels another pair encircle her torso fiercely. They’re kissing immediately and it’s more smiles and laughter bubbling up than anything else. 

It both does and doesn't feel like their first time. They've gone _far_ past first base long distance by now but have yet to even hold hands in person, so this short silly kiss makes Abby deliriously happy. 

It lasts two seconds before they pull back just enough to lock eyes. There's a question on the tip of Abby's tongue and Riley seems to understand because one corner of her lips quirks up and she nods almost imperceptibly. 

Abby closes her eyes and presses back in. They're slower this time, allowing themselves to feel each other's softness, sink into it. A small puff of Riley's breath warms a spot on Abby's cheek and that small thing is indescribably precious now, the immediacy of it, the intimacy. 

“Hey, you,” Riley says when they finally disconnect again but remain in their tight bear hug.

“Hey yourself!” Abby grins back, unable and totally uninterested in containing her excitement. “You’re here! How was your flight?”

“I think that’s the most I’ve slept in three weeks, so, fantastic.”

//

That statement may have been true but Riley still crashes once they’re back at the apartment. Abby helps her shed all her outerwear, her shoes, her luggage and makes her drink some water and use the bathroom before allowing her to wander over to the bedroom corner of the studio. She flops onto Abby’s bed as easily as if she’s been in it plenty of times before which, in a way, is true. 

Their first time having sex long-distance had been...ridiculously hot and had finally given some release to the swell of feelings swirling around and burning inside her, but it definitely hadn’t snuffed out their rampant sexual frustration. If anything, a taste had made her all the more desperate for the whole. As comparably smooth as Riley tends to be in their dynamic, Abby feels the same longing reciprocated, vibrating all along the intangible thread between them.

“I swear we’ll do more exciting shit in this bed once I get a power nap in me,” Riley says aptly, eyes closed and already burrowing into the pillows.

Abby smiles looking down at her and throws the spare blanket from the couch over her. She chuckles when she hears a small “ _Yesss_ ” as Riley promptly burritos herself into it.

“Don’t worry about it. Just get some sleep already, we’ve got time. I’m not dragging your zombie ass all over Pittsburgh. And John can’t do it cause he’s only got one hand without a phone in it at all times.”

“I’ve got somethin’ for _your_ hand to hold at all times,” the blanket burrito mumbles groggily.

Abby quirks an eyebrow even though Riley's facedown in the plushest pillow and halfway to sleep already. Sluggishly, she frees one arm from the blanket and raises it up, as for a high five.

“ _This guy_ , right here,” she says, waving her hand a little. 

Abby laughs and grants her the requested high five, well-earned. 

“Sleep, you goober. I’ll be right here.”

She doesn’t need telling twice apparently; there’s no response and soon enough Abby can hear the faintest snoring while she pads quietly around the apartment, tucking Riley’s coat, shoes, and suitcase a bit more tidily away. 

Grabbing her laptop from the coffee table, she props the rest of the bed pillows against the headboard and settles herself next to her snoozing girlfriend to squeeze in some term paper drafts for however long the nap will last. 

She knows by now that Riley falls asleep fast and hard, a crucial skill for med school survivors, so she doesn’t bother trying to mute her keyboard sounds as she types up feedback for her students. It’s nice like this, leaning back against the pillows with her laptop balanced on her stomach, the space quiet except for her keys tapping gently and the intermittent soft snoring from the other side of the bed.

If she spends every two minutes looking over at how peaceful Riley’s face looks at rest, well, she manages to get through a class’ worth of papers anyway, so no one can rightly accuse her of slacking off too much.

//

Two and a half hours and some change later (to allow for a few spontaneous makeouts that just kept happening between their efforts to get themselves ready to go back out) they’re holding hands, as promised, while taking a turn around the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Hall of Sculpture.

“So this whole thing is actually a copy of the Parthenon’s inner sanctuary. Carnegie didn't care about originals so much as wider access to art for public education, so he had a huge collection of copies. Lotta them are in the Hall of Architecture but here we've got sixty-nine—”

“Nice.”

“—nice—plaster casts in this room of all these sculptures from Egypt, Greece, Rome. Really popular spot for weddings now too. Care to call me out?”

“Mm,” Riley thinks for a moment. “That all seems fine. Including the sixty-nine detail; I feel like that’d be too easy for you to make up, and usually spotting sixty-nines in the wild is legit. That’s why it’s hilarious. I’m gonna say that’s all true.”

“Correct,” Abby confirms. 

What had started as Abby providing running commentary for their tour at some point had morphed into a game of “True or False” featuring both obscure facts about the museum works as well as her best attempts at false made-up facts.

“So, Professor, what's your least favorite thing about being in museums?”

“Ah, easy," she says, guiding them across the marble room. "School field trips. I know they're just kids but they get loud, they're bored, their shoes squeak. Like they're not really gonna remember any tour facts, y'know? And if you've got multiple groups at once— _oof_ , can't hear yourself think.” 

“Liar liar," Riley chimes in cheerfully.

“You think I enjoy trying to experience _this_ ancient beauty," she gestures to the nearest masterfully chiseled stone buttcheek, “to the ambient background sounds of a daycare?" 

Riley smirks and untwines their hands for a second to loop her arm through Abby's and pat her bicep knowingly with her other hand.

“Oh, hon. We both know you're an old man trapped in a compact lesbian body, but you definitely love museum children. I saw you gush over that girl with braids who was standing in front of us when we first walked in." 

" _Aghh_ she had a little backpack that looked like an owl! Damn, that was before we even started this game." 

“Assuming you aren't _always_ in the middle of a game is how you lose games, babe," Riley chides, bumping shoulders with Abby as they walk. “You see yourself in the kids, don't you?"

Abby chuckles, pushes a hand through her hair sheepishly. “I do, yeah. My parents were always taking me to museums growing up. I loved 'em. I kept trying to give them tours before I even knew anything about the art."

“That is extremely nerdy and extremely sweet. And now you're giving tours to your girlfriend that are only _half_ completely made up." 

“I think they'd be proud," Abby grins. “Well, you were eerily right again, Rilo. Do I really suck that much at lying?”

“It’s fine, babe. I’m a great liar. If we ever have to go on the lam with fake identities just leave all the talking to me.”

“Deal. I get dibs on having a fake mustache though.”

“Absolutely not. This visage was born for a robust ‘stache.” 

//

Around one in the afternoon, John joins up with them at a small halal spot they'd first eaten at this one night after a party thrown by one of his former co-workers had become too unbearably awkward and they'd ditched early. 

They're bunched into a booth huddling over a speckled linoleum table piled with gyro by the pound, tabbouleh, hummus, curry fries, falafel, and extra tzatziki. It's hard to remember who'd ordered what in a blur of hunger but they've ended up reaching across each other and sharing it all anyway while chatting lightly.

“What is the weirdest thing you’ve seen pulled out of someone’s butt?” 

John looks to Riley expectantly while plucking several fries from the warm foil.

“God, so many things. Removal foreign body is super common, really. Mostly just dildos and stuff but last month we got a bouncy ball.”

“That must’ve been an _intense_ bounce to get all the way up in there.”

“Ya. It was Easter themed too. Light-up.”

“R.I.P. light-up holiday bouncy ball. Gone but not forgotten.”

“Do you guys not just give them back to the patients..?” Abby pipes up.

“ _Noo._ No that is definitely hazardous waste, my love. We dispose the fuck out of that shit. Also you just do _not_ feel like giving them that stuff back, who knows what they’re gonna do with it. One guy came in with a parsnip.”

“Augh!!” Abby gags at the same moment John says “Those are really good potassium and manganese.”

Riley simply takes another bite of falafel and nods sagely.

“He was way chatty too. Runs his own grocery store. Couldn’t stop talking about how much he _loves_ organic produce.”

“ _Yeah_ he does,” John says through a mouthful of hummus.

He and Riley share a resounding high five.

//

For the next several hours they wander around on an improvised food crawl, splitting a huge crepe, sampling piping hot pierogies, washing them down with a couple agua frescas. They stop briefly in a grocery so Abby can restock some spices and then they chill back at her apartment for another couple hours.

It feels natural for the three of them to be walking around elbow to elbow (except when they pare down to single file as a courtesy to folks passing in the opposite direction). Like they’re a trio of college friends or something.

Abby had been pretty sure these two would get along—they’re both incredibly upfront and stylish truth-dropping queers—but she might not have expected them to take to each other so quickly or completely. It’s nice. 

Harper and John had always gotten on well. She’d found him a charismatic delight like almost everyone does and had always asked how he was doing when Abby returned from meeting up with him; he’d always held due respect for what a “ _tall drink of northern Irish spring water for the parched lesbian masses_ ” Harper is and appreciated her ability to linguistically cut down any corrupt politician she set her journalistic sights on.

But he had always stayed decidedly Abby's friend throughout the relationship. They’d usually meet up just the two of them while Harper was working or otherwise occupied, so she’d rarely spent time casually hanging out with both her best friend and her girlfriend at once beyond parties and holidays. But to be honest, she could easily picture John and Riley meeting up for coffee and trading weird publishing and doctoring anecdotes without her. It’s a thought that fills her with unanticipated fondness.

At around six thirty they make their way over to a brightly lit nearby drag venue. As sort of a throwback to their previous in-person hangouts, Abby had purchased three tickets to a Madonna and Gaga themed drag dinner as soon as Riley’s flights had been confirmed. John had taken her to a couple drag brunches here before and was more than happy to be included in this outing. He was never one to stand for third wheeling but free drag and drinks aren't easily passed up and besides, Abby is starting to feel increasingly convinced that Riley and John could conceivably be siblings separated at birth.

//

After the show they share a Lyft home for the night, dropping John off first at his apartment. Once he climbs out of the car, stumbling only once and fishing his keys out with one hand while blowing profuse kisses to them with the other, Abby becomes aware it’s just the two of them in the backseats now. They’d given John the seat on the right so he wouldn’t need to climb over one of them to get to the door, so now they’re pressed right up against each other, Abby in the middle and Riley by the window.

As the car starts up again and they pull away from the curb she glances over at Riley, who’s already looking at her with a thoughtful expression. She swallows down the feeling in her throat.

“Ready to go home?”

For half a second Riley’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly in surprise, but it passes as soon as it comes. Her lips curve into a little smile and it’s a small warmth in Abby’s chest.

“Yeah. I am.” 

//

Once again they’re through the door of the apartment, cutting a quick determined beeline towards the bed while shedding layers.

Well, as quick as they can manage while one of them’s backpedaling blindly and their eyes are shut and they’re tongue deep in each other’s throats barely bothering to take in oxygen. If it weren’t second nature to shut and lock the door behind her Abby isn’t sure she’d have managed that at all and then it would've been a real show if any of her neighbors happened to walk by tonight. 

But it’s fine. Door’s locked up properly, keys are on the hook over the umbrella rack, coats are on the counter and on the back of the couch, shoes are… somewhere, she’d tripped on what felt like three of them at some point crossing the living room. Doesn’t matter. More important things going on right now.

Like finally _finally,_ after months of hot phone sex and _very_ frequent dreams where she’d woken up the next morning frustrated, getting to feel and taste the slide of Riley’s mouth against hers. The heat of it shoots straight between her thighs and _Jesus_ it’s been a long time since she got laid, in person anyway, and fuck— _fuck_ she’s more than ready for it. It surprisingly hadn’t felt urgent getting to this point while they’d been out appraising nude statues, munching on Mediterranean, and watching blonde-wigged queens belt to _Bad Romance_ and _Like A Prayer_ , but the crushing maddening rampant _need_ that’s been mounting for weeks comes rushing back all at once.

They stumble into bed, about sixty percent of their clothing successfully scattered in mystery spots around the apartment by now. 

All eager gasps and urgent grasping, her immediate world is hot and breathy with no sign of slowing down. 

From above her Riley suddenly pulls back, hair dark all around them and stare even darker, boring intently into Abby’s wide eyes.

“Hey,” she says, lips already swollen from what they’ve just been doing.

“Hey,” Abby responds, utterly incapable of blinking or breaking their heated stare.

“I’m gonna use your bathroom real quick first. Long day out.” 

“Oh,” Abby blinks finally. “Oh! Y-yeah, of course, go for it my dude. Make yourself at home.”

Huh. What a super unsexy odd thing to say with your absolutely fucking gorgeous half-naked girlfriend on top of you. She just smirks though and throws a wink in for good measure, pushing herself off Abby and off the bed and gathering some stuff from her suitcase before sauntering—it _has_ to be for show, there’s no way she just walks this enticingly—into the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

Abby slowly lets out a huge exhale. Alright, still breathing. Cool. Great! 

This is a perfect opportunity actually. While Riley freshens up behind the closed door, Abby rolls out of bed and quietly rummages through her wardrobe before finding what she’s looking for. She wriggles out of her jeans—damn it, they make her ass and calves look “girl hell _yes_ you tiny lesbian icon” according to John but they’re _impossible_ to peel off in a rush—and her underwear, then shoves the new garment over her head, tugging it down over her arms and the rest of her just as she hears the doorknob turn again with a click.

She dives, arms outstretched like a batter rounding home, back onto the bed and hurriedly tries to arrange herself into her best approximation of a seductive pin-up girl posing on her side, head propped on one hand as the door slowly opens, spilling light into the room once more. 

She stops breathing again.

Backlit by the angled harsh yellow of the bathroom lights, filling Abby’s entire vision is a silhouette perfectly recreated from a combination of last year’s holiday memories and her own longing subconscious. 

Riley is standing confidently, wide-stanced, hands nonchalantly in pockets before Abby’s bed. Her bra and her underwear are both a smooth rich obsidian shade, the subtle sheen of them in the moonlight from the window suggesting they’re probably some kind of legit quality silk rather than a cheap synthetic fabric. They’re trimmed in delicate lace, tasteful and not too _grandma’s doily_ , not too _wanton mistress of debauchery_ —understated, classy. 

Draped around her neck and trailing loosely over the tastefully trimmed cups of her high end bra is a slim black necktie, similar in subtle shine to the lingerie set and left casually enticingly untied. 

And on top of all that, somehow hiding so much skin yet heightening the seductiveness of the whole look: the deep midnight velvet blazer that she first ever saw on one of the worst nights of her life, yet somehow keeps seeing in her mind again and again. It’s as sharp and elegant and utterly right for the woman wearing it as it had been that first night, squaring her shoulders, tapering to the wrists, lending her figure a sleek, self-assured look difficult to not pay attention to.

Riley stays like that, an absolute vision of bedroom fantasy, for several moments, maybe allowing her to drink it all in properly, maybe appraising Abby’s celebratory first-sex getup in turn. 

“Looks like we both came prepared tonight,” she says at last, eyebrows raised and an inconsiderately hot smirk on her lips. 

“Yeah, _Jesus_. Did you pack all that just for this?” 

Riley shrugs. “Figured I should wear something special, rev your engines for you. Not that you need it, I hope. Besides, I anticipate we’re going to be spending a lot of time not wearing clothes so I packed light.”

Considering her brain is short-circuiting faster than she can even fully process what Riley is saying, she’s surprised she manages to respond.

“Great minds, huh? Although I won’t lie, I’m still not totally sure I get why _this_ was _your_ top pick for a sexy outfit to get me into. Do you hate my shapely figure or something?”

“Of course not. It’s just incredibly rare for someone to be the _perfect_ mix of hot lesbian ass and tooth-achingly, newborn baby kittens _adorable_. Look at you, you’re like the embodiment of a warm cup of tea by the fireplace in autumn. You look like the world’s biggest marshmallow, I wanna pinch your cheeks and toast you right up.”

“Please stop making fun and come top the hell out of me right now.”

“You got it, stud,” she says, doing a silly little wiggle and shooting off finger guns while she does, still managing to somehow be hot and charming through the ridiculous gesture.

As promised, though, she’s back on the bed before Abby can complete her eyeroll and she’s kneeling, head bowed to a spot of skin just peeking from the sweater's hem. Riley sucks a slow wet open-mouthed kiss there high on her thigh before swooping back up to muffle the strained whine escaping Abby's throat with another crush of their mouths.

When Abby tilts her head just so, their lips angle and lock so for several minutes they're nothing but a heated mess of thrashing swirling tongues. They eventually slow into a more languid rhythm when suddenly Abby lets out an indignant “Eep!” 

“What was that??” she practically squawks.

Riley winks. “Told you I’d pinch your cheeks.”

“That is _super_ inappropriate, you perv.”

“If you were hoping for a family-friendly evening I think we should definitely rethink the agenda.”

Growling, she tangles fingers in dark hair and pulls them back together for a more heated kiss, running her tongue along the jagged edges of teeth before plunging deeper, not letting up until she feels Riley’s laugh reverberate through her throat and tongue glide across the roof of her mouth.

Moving against each other now is a fascination as much as it is sheer desire and tension. Things they've many times spoken to, around, over, through each other they now get to reach out hands and eyes and lips to _do_ to each other in one space. What a privilege, a gift. What an absolute human marvel that is. 

The sensations—the possibilities—that are new are almost overwhelming. All sound is so near, so strikingly clear with no distance or filter between them. Just pure sounds.

There's so much warmth and every kind is different. The warmth of their breaths, their skin where it presses together, the intangible but scorching heat of want between their bodies, and beneath all of it—at the center—the impossibly warm core of knowing they are together in the same place, here and in their feelings. 

There is a bubble of space between Abby's skin and the thick walls of her overlarge sweater that Riley's climbing hand disrupts with its slow ascent. She kind of gets her girlfriend's fascination with it now. The sweater is like a tent of comfort, of cozy, that isn't unlike the tone of their connection to each other. A safe warm space just for them where underneath they are trustingly bare. 

Riley's exploration is heated but gentle and where the round pads of her fingertips pause and press a little firmer into flesh every time their kissing surges anew, Abby's mind, unbidden, remembers Bernini. The way marble fingers sink into marble flesh, how fascinatingly human that detail is. 

She thinks too, for a second, about the terrible myth the carved stone tells—Proserpina and Pluto, Persephone and Hades, you know. Sculpted in a time when ruinous abductions were fashionable fine art material, it doesn’t depict one of the kinder versions of that story, either. She relates a little though, she thinks, to the idea of sitting shadowed in the underworld to step briefly onto warm earth once more. This is like that. Riley above her and in her sweater and at her neck, her mouth, her throat is a breath of life she hasn’t felt in a long time. When exactly did normal life in Pittsburgh turn into something so crucially lacking? 

But they’re not cold stone and not a gruesome myth of antiquity and Riley is warm and real and here right now so fuck the lonely underworld; her girlfriend’s moan travels from mouth to brain and pushes all the unimportant worries clear out. They’ll worry later about missing this. She’s always been a firm believer in loving the hardest you can even if it’ll hurt you more later. 

“Doctor, I don’t know if you’ve been told yet this evening,” she says in a pause for breath with a spark in her voice, “but this is really a _very_ nice ensemble you have here. Really excellent taste.”

“Oh yeah?” Riley plays along, pulling back just minutely. “Someone else picked it out for me actually, so I really can’t comment.”

Abby smiles, brings fingers to trace the intricate lace across Riley’s chest. She thinks about Riley selecting this garment specifically for her, to bring to life a fantasy she'd blurted out over the phone their first time doing any of this together, and blushes ridiculously even though she’s had it pressed very assertively into her for the past ten minutes already.

“Oh, definitely. The only thing is _ah…_ ” she pretends to contemplate, squinting directly at the lingerie she’s currently feeling up and pursing her lips. “I feel like there’s just _one_ adjustment I’d make.”

“Well, I'd hate to be anything less than perfectly fashionable. What’s your constructive critique?”

“I have to say, I'm desperate to see what's underneath."

Riley smirks and begins to shift, but Abby stays her with a hand on her shoulder. 

“Oh, but uh…do you—" Abby shakes her head, flustered, and tries again. “Would it be…weird if I requested bra stripped, blazer on..? I mean I know that's more of a logistical challenge so it's totally cool if—"

“I think we can manage it. You want to help?" Riley says gently but eyes intent.

“Fuck yes."

Abby moves her hand from its place at Riley's side to a bit below the space between her shoulder blades, concentrates on what her fingers feel for a second, then undoes the clasps to the silk black bra. Riley tilts her chin up and rolls her shoulders back so that when Abby dips her hand beneath where jacket collar meets skin, the whole layer begins slipping easily off. She helps one arm then the other out from the sleeves, watches the velvet and silk pool at Riley's waist, then turns her full attention back to the now loosened lingerie.

Glancing up, throat dry, she watches Riley keep eye contact as she begins to slowly, smoothly peel the piece from her body. When Abby's eyes trail down she swears she feels them bulge in their sockets like a cartoon steam engine is charging at her. Words are knocked from her brain like pins in a bowling lane after a strike. So many similes for how she’s feeling blitz in her brain and right out again.

“ _Wow_ , Riley you…" Abby breathes. “You... _god_ you’re..."

“Tits?" Riley supplies helpfully. 

“Yes. Yeah that's what I was looking for. I was going to say that you're tits. I thought that'd be really charming and sexy." 

She's sure she goes red from yet again being too gay to function but Riley just smiles at her as if Abby really had managed something sexy and charming, like she understands what she'd meant. That seeing Riley this way is more than she can describe, makes her feel a hunger that's more than just being impossibly turned on. It isn't the time to stop and put words to it but she knows she'll be contemplating this feeling later. 

Without breaking their gaze Riley slips herself back into the jacket, waits. Deciding against saying anything else just yet, Abby trails careful fingers over skin starting at Riley's neck, down across the ridge of her clavicle, down to the gentle slope of a breast and over its curving side. Tucks fingertips beneath the slight swell and smoothes her palm to cup and feel the soft heft of it, to know things she's only guessed at before. Three dimensions of space, a fourth dimension of time—of instantaneous reaction to every little thing each of them does. 

Reaching her thumb up she brushes it against the nipple, nudging its peak to one side and hearing Riley nearly hiss out a breath, squeeze shut her eyes that had until now been watching observantly. Abby's so taken with soaking in this reaction that she at first doesn't notice Riley's own hands snaking back under the sweater hem, this time pushing the fabric up to chase their movements. 

She pushes the sweater up past Abby's chest then leans down so she can kiss and lick and press teeth against the length of her torso from belly to sternum as strangled noises stutter from Abby’s throat. She takes a peak into her mouth, first only grazing lightly, teasingly, with her lips until Abby tangles fingers into her hair and arches up, shoves herself into the wet and warmth of Riley's mouth. As it closes in _finally_ she feels tongue engulf her like a wave, braces herself for it. 

When Riley removes her mouth—met with an involuntary sound of protest—she lowers herself into Abby, sealing skin to skin, inch by inch until they're seamless, chests pressed together. Opening her eyes again, Abby sees Riley’s face just barely above hers, eyes glossy, impossibly tender, looking for all the world like if she could get her own soul loose from her body she’d willingly let go and fall happily into Abby.

“I could and would _love_ to get used to this," she says at last, leaning forward to pepper another round of kisses to nose, cheeks, jaw, mouth.

Abby strains to respond through kisses and rapid breath. “Kissing? Sex?"

“Mm all of it. This is just... _a lot_ going on you know? It's been an honor fucking you over the phone, but this?" she says, dipping her head to nip lightly at an earlobe, eliciting another high keening sound.

“Fuck, _that_ ? Knowing you feel _exactly_ what I'm doing to you because I can see and hear you feel it— _feel_ you feel it? 

“ _God_ yea," Abby moans agreement. 

“Alright if I kick things up a notch then or you gonna explode if I touch you?" 

“I'm gonna fucking explode either way so _please yes_."

No barrier in the form of underwear to impede her, Riley slips her hand lower, lower until she's _there—fuck—_ with articulate fingers stroking short paths, familiarizing with folds and hair and slickness. They resume their hungered kissing from before as Riley continues working her fingers, burrows her other hand back into warm knit depths to spread her palm across a breast and roll its peak between two fingers. 

A groan tightens deep inside Abby’s chest and vibrates haltingly up her vocal cords and she clenches fistfuls of dark hair close to the scalp before freeing one hand so she can plunge it into the lacy silk between Riley’s thighs, not bothering with pulling the garment down properly. It’s instantly gratifying hearing and feeling Riley’s abrupt forceful exhale into their kiss at the action and Abby slides her other hand down to cradle a flushed cheek and guide their foreheads to rest against each other. 

There are too many points of connection between them soon to keep track of any one source of sensations _—_ fingers working through wetness and heat, skin everywhere, breaths and moans, trimmed nails and teeth, tightened muscles, organs pumping desperately away in chest cavities _—_ so Abby just surrenders herself to the whole of these feelings and lets it all wash over her, happy to be subsumed by something that feels so much like finding what was missing.

//

Riley’s prediction proves true. Afternoons they spend hitting up some more of Abby and John’s favorite spots. Evenings and sleep-in mornings heavily feature makeouts and eager long-awaited sex of both the insatiable _holy shit please fuck my brains out right now_ and laidback _studiously memorizing all of each other while we can_ varieties.

On Thursday, they change up the routine to host proper Friendsgiving.

Abby’s apartment is the predetermined gathering spot because despite it being on the small side and what John christens “ _a den of decadent big-brain lesbian sin_ ,” her kitchen is still better equipped than his. He does bring his own apron that reads “ _Proud of my gay dad_ ” though. 

“ _Is_ your dad gay?” Riley asks, sipping her mini Martinelli’s and leaning against the counter.

“ _Fuck_ no; anti-gay for decades, neutral to gays in recent years,” John says. “I am both the ‘proud of’ _and_ the ‘gay dad’ in this situation.”

Riley nods, holding her tiny green bottle up in a toast. “Be the gay dad you want to see in the world.”

“Abigail is basically my awkward but beautiful gay child anyway.”

“You’d be a terrible father,” Abby replies without looking up from the stuffing she’s stirring, only because she well knows by now that John a) does not have any interest in raising kids, only Cool Uncle-ing them and b) after years of therapy, emotional work, and building self-love, has grown far stronger than his past issues with his own father can compete with.

“How _dare_ you use that tone with me young lady, I did _not_ raise you to be like this,” he quips back, attempting a _stern lecturing father_ face but landing a lot closer to _gay offended by watching a cishet white man try to dance sensually_. 

The intended effect is not at all helped by the fact that his arms crossed across his chest are covered by comically huge quilted oven mitts like a goalie. He’d put them on twenty minutes ago when Abby had asked him to put the casserole in and had decided not to take them off because he was definitely making them work. 

“Besides,” he adds, an afterthought, “Dads _are_ terrible, so I’m perfectly qualified.”

Riley smirks into her drink. 

“How’s the stuffing coming along, champ?” 

“Here, have a taste.”

She scoops some of the stuffing into the wooden spoon she’s been stirring with, blows on it lightly to cool it down and offers it to Riley, who’s crossed the kitchen to stand next to her.

“Oh hell yeah. John, come put some of this in your mouth.”

He makes a face but is already walking over as Abby scoops and cools off a sample for him.

“Excuse me, that’s _wildly_ unhygienic. What kind of doctor are you? I’m the only one here who hasn’t been swapping spit like _Disobedience_ all weekend.” 

“You’ll live,” she promises, holding the accused spoon out for him as he bends down. “I know you take your flu shot at every possible chance. Even though you freak out for days _every_ time leading up to getting a shot.”

“First of all,” he mumbles around a mouthful of flavorful bread mash, “it is not crazy to _not_ enjoy being fucking stabbed by a stranger. Second, _herd immunity,_ Abs; I am being a responsible citizen, Dr. Bennett will back me on this. Third, getting sick is super gross and _so_ boring so you _will not_ catch me sleeping on germ season. I make sacrifices to do what’s right.”

“Oh, is that why you make them let you pick from the lollipop bucket that is strictly for child patients?”

“You’re goddamn right I do. I don’t pay taxes to not get compensated for doing my civic duty.”

“Yeah, thank you for your service. Go find the next Thanksgiving _Bob’s Burgers_.” 

He does, and Abby lifts herself up on her toes a bit, bending over to inspect the pot on the back burner.

“Hey babe, these potatoes are good now, I think. Would you mind draining them and then ricing them into that bowl over there? I’ll work on the cream.”

“On it.” 

Abby grabs the heavy cream and the ziploc of rosemary from the fridge and brings the small bowl of garlic she’d pre-crushed closer to the stove. Off to the side she hears the heavy pour of water and sees the puff of steam from the sink as Riley drains the cubed potatoes through a strainer. 

“Here,” she holds out her hands, “pass it back to me for a sec, I’ll put it back on the heat for a bit to just get out the extra moisture. Ricer’s down next to the sink, third drawer.” 

She sets the potatoes on a burner and adds all the ingredients for the cream into a smaller pot on another burner set to medium. She can hear Bob Belcher’s sonorous voice from the living room as John rejoins them. 

This is good. It feels right, the three of them in the kitchen, the stove and oven both going, the sounds of stirring, simmering, and holiday TV. 

She’s always loved this. Gathering, putting a feast together, small talk while everyone gets in the holiday spirit. This holiday, at least, isn’t tainted by bad memories of the near and distant past. It’s always been a happy holiday for her. Her grandma had been a General in the kitchen on Thanksgiving, directing uncles, aunts, cousins around the room. She’d been big on holiday hosting. Not in a Tipper Caldwell _“I must control every aspect of this event so I don’t have a breakdown about not being in control of every aspect of my family_ ” way. In the way that feeding people, taking care of them, and making them comfortable and welcome had been her clearest way of expressing she loved you.

One year ago, Abby had been standing in a different kitchen with John and Harper doing much the same as she is currently. Strange that everything had felt so comfortable and optimistic then, before everything happened. 

Before the much-hyped Candy Cane Lane guided tour, before falling off a random rooftop and being mortally spared by the grace of jumbo inflatable Frosty, being asked about her scholarly credentials then _literally_ talked down to by a trust fund seventy-year-old while seated in the world’s shortest chair, getting grilled by a pair of truly unhinged mall cops, badly singing “Must Be Santa” into a mic with festive Queens, being accused of pocketing a novelty costume bit of mom-jewelry, and having her heart broken in the biggest emotional knife-twist of her life past the age of nineteen. 

She’d already put in the order with the jewelers across town by then. She’d had no idea at the time that it would turn out to be _not_ , in fact, one of the happiest purchases of her life. Returning to the store eight days after she’d gotten back from the disaster trip to return the ring had been, to say the least, an uncomfortable experience. The woman on shift had been very sympathetic though and thankfully she hadn’t had the ring personalized other than sizing, since she’d figured she would come back after the trip with her fiancée so Harper could pick what she wanted for the engraving inside herself. So they accepted the ring back and refunded the payment into her account with no intrusive questions and minimal _“Ooo, that’s rough, kid”_ looks.

That’s all history though, albeit recent history. Whatever unexpected turns had led to the happy companionable scene she finds herself in now, she's confident they were worth it. She wouldn't trade this. 

“ _Holy She-Ra and the Princesses of Power,_ woman!!” John snaps her out of her spaced out self retrospective.

“Do you fucking _lift_ , this thing is legit a wholeass Olympian trial to press!”

He’s hunched over the bowl of riced potato sitting in the sink, hands clamped around the handles of the ricer, biceps trembling. Peeking into the pot sitting next to the sink, it looks like Riley had gotten through around three quarters of the potato cubes before tagging John in for a turn. 

“Nah,” Riley tilts her head and smiles at him. “Brains over brawn, Jonathan. Leverage, my dude. That’s why I put the bowl in the sink; brace the ricer against the edge.”

He does as advised and sighs in relief when it does the trick, as though he’d been truly worried for a minute that he was just finding out that someone had slipped him some Kryptonite. 

“You guys,” she blurts unintentionally.

They turn to her, both happy, at ease.

“I’m really glad you’re both here. I really missed having something like this.”

A soft look passes over Riley's face and John looks touched.

“Honey, no way I’d miss this. You know I’m a Thanksgiving Gay. Light sweaters, using the most phallic cooking tool of all—the baster—eating until you pass out on the couch then waking up hours later and doing it again. What’s not to love?”

Scrunching his majestic brows he quickly adds, “Except for the mass genocide, human atrocities, American educational historical whitewashing, syphilis-dicked stankface llama-fucker Columbus’ colonialist, white supremacist, second grader geography skills ass… Whatever, historically and socially-conscious Friendsgiving is king of the season.”

“I’m a Halloween Gay,” Riley adds, “but yeah, this is the best holiday I’ve had in years. You guys are really a top notch tiny chef girlfriend and tall-haired gay dad friend." 

John places his hand over his heart feelingly and mouths a tiny _aww_. 

“Also they actually DNA-tested the pathogen from a bunch of super dead Europeans and found the strain predates Columbus’ racist joyride to the Americas. _Treponema pallidum_ —got like five million people throughout Europe. I’d still hundred percent go on record theorizing he did assault animals though. I mean he fucking did it to people, so.”

“Fucking worthless garbage. Melt all his statues and forge ‘em into the cage we use to lower the Alt-Right to the bottom of the sea.”

The smile on Abby’s face by now is so big and so full of the bright fluttery things in her chest that she feels like it might become permanent. It's a nice thought. 

//

The next day, they do the airport again but in sad reverse. Abby accompanies Riley as far as she can into PIT, wheels her tidy blue hard shell carry-on spinner—trust Riley to travel smartly as she dresses—upright by the side of her where she isn't holding her girlfriend's hand. 

Instead of bouncing anxiously and scanning a small sea of holiday wayfarers for the one face she wants to see constantly these days, she's standing toe-to-toe staring into that gorgeous, kind, apologetic face as many moments as she can steal before Riley needs to be on her way. 

“Jesus Christ you're hard to say goodbye to, you know that?”

Abby laughs wetly, eyes welling and sniffles not far behind.

“No walk in the park on my end either,” she chuckles, running a thumb over the knuckles of Riley's hand in hers. 

“I guess that's a good sign though, yeah? Pretty lucky when you've got someone that utterly sucks to part with. It's not forever.” 

Riley's voice is nearly as even as it almost always is, but it's been in Abby's ear ( _right_ in her ear, these precious few days) often enough now that Abby can discern every little deviance from its usual—each minute tremor, each shaky deliberate breath, each syllable just a hint reluctant to come out. She knows what the surface tension of Riley barely grasping by fingertips a flood of feeling looks, sounds like now.

“Good _god_ Bennett, pull yourself together, man!” Abby says in a mid-Atlantic radio voice to a Riley who most likely looks the picture of composure to passers by, grabbing her by the biceps in pantomimed desperation. “Why, making such a scene in the middle of _Pittsburgh International??_ It's a goddamn indecorous disgrace, Bennett, I tell you.”

Riley bursts with a laugh, eyes squeezing shut and tears falling openly as a huge grin splits her face. Abby can feel the matching grin on her face. 

“Oh my god, Abs, no _whyyy_ ,” she groans through laughs with eyes still shut. “Arrggh, I'm going to be crying and snot-drenched all the way through security now and they're gonna flag me as a concerning unstable individual.”

“I promise I will bail you out of airport jail if it becomes necessary,” Abby smiles, framing Riley's face with her palms, fingerpads gently swiping tear streaks away. 

“You're right though,” she adds, lowering her hands to envelop Riley in one last make-it-count bear hug, pressing as close in as she can and burrowing her face in Riley's neck so her muffled voice is right by the shell of an ear. “I feel _ludicrously_ lucky even with how completely fucking sad I am right now. It isn't forever.”

Riley holds her tight, turns her head so her nose and lips press warm, soft, firm to Abby's cheek. They take a few more moments like this, holding, burrowing, kissing like they're speaking promises. Heart-heavy goodbyes like this are dime a dozen in an international airport, but if anyone walking by them so much as double-glances their embrace they don't notice anyway; the world is small now and they hold all of it between them.

//

Abby is home and it doesn't feel like it. In small quiet ways, her cozy apartment feels already not quite right anymore. 

She sighs as she pulls boots slowly from her wool-socked feet, returns her coat to its hanger, slides her keys ring onto its hook. She pads softly over to her bed, retracing steps she and Riley had taken together over the past handful of days in what had already begun to feel like routine. 

Lowering herself onto the bed helps with her sudden tiredness but not with the lonesomeness settling into her bones. Her sheets, pillowcases still smell faintly of forest mixed with rosemary, mint. Her XL cable-knit turned object of blush-inducing fascination still sits loosely folded in the corner. She closes her eyes and sighs again, twining her fingers and folding her arms behind her head. She hears a muffled crinkle.

Furrowing her brow, she probes blindly under the pillow with one hand until she catches a papery corner of something between two fingers. She pulls it out, looks it over. _Oh…_

The mystery object is now very familiar. An ochre colored envelope, her name written simply across the front with a casual little heart after the “y”. 

It’s a letter from Riley. 

It isn’t addressed and hasn’t been sealed so clearly it was never meant for mail. She opens the flap, slides several sheets of stationery bordered in a faint delicate pattern of moon phases from October’s care package out, unfolds them, and begins to read.

_Hey Abs—_

_I’m plane folk now. I am bound to the strange codes of this unnatural giant metal tube until such time as our liege flight personnel see fit to release us from this prison. I will subsist only on thimbles of ginger-ale, miniature bags of pretzels, and the two pounds of granola bars, soccer mom cheez-its packs, and children’s fruit gummies you packed me._

_These last few rations I must hide from my fellow captives, lest they hunt me in my sleep out of desperation. Once we hit our halfway point I may find it necessary to leverage them in bartering exchanges, perhaps to gain covetous access to the bathroom. Or I may open one of the cheez-its if defending myself becomes necessary, as it is not a flight-sanctioned consumable and therefore will create an explosion if opened at the wrong altitude._

_Five days with you Abby isn’t anywhere near enough, but at the same time? It’s everything. It’s the best five days I’ve had in a year, probably more._

_I have a feeling when you get home it’ll sink in that vacation’s over and I’m gone. And we don’t know when we’ll next see each other in the same physical space. You’re probably splayed out on the couch or on the bed like a very cute, very sad gay starfish._

_I hate it too. I hate leaving you, even if I’ll be reading texts from you in a handful of hours. If I weren’t going to be asleep as the dead until touchdown I’d be lonely as fuck. I’d be thinking about how mussing your bedhead feels when you first wake up, how your humming sounds when you’re brushing your teeth, how anything tastes when you’re the one who cooked it._

_Ever since I met you I’ve been on some kind of lesbian Eat, Pray, Love journey but instead of eating a bunch of pasta and discovering that inner peace is a boner for Javier Bardem I’ve been texting you, calling you for hours like it’s the 90s again, writing you love letters at the witching hour right after a shift when I’m still coated in resident doctor grime, falling asleep with you over video calls because neither of us feels like ending it until forced to and pretending that’s remotely anything like falling asleep next to you—and in the middle of all that? I’ve been discovering there is, as far as I can tell, nothing I’ve encountered on this planet that makes me happier than knowing you._

_It seems stupid, really fucking stupid, to be getting on a plane to go somewhere you’re not. Going back to a place that isn’t home because it’s 271 miles away from you and when I’m there I can hear you and see you but I can’t feel or smell or taste you._

_Three out of five human senses seem kind of pointless to me these days, honestly, and the other two are like, just barely useful. Hyperbolic drama is the divine birthright of the gays, so it’s fine for me to say that._

_I love you._

_I like, really fucking love you. I love you, and I think maybe I also need you? I’ve been keeping track and all of the data suggests that your existence is necessary for mine now._

_Being with you in person and getting to have a slice of what it’s like to sleep in your bed, eat your food, wear your henleys from the youth section of the GAP outlet store, has beyond a shadow of a doubt verified that theory._

_Having you make my coffee for me before I even remember I require it to function? Fantastic._

_Feeling you wiggle around in my arms until you decide you’ve found exactly the ideal position when you’re the little spoon? Hell yeah, great shit. Life-changing._

_Having unprecedentedly hot, fogged up windows steaming, lethally electrifying, synapse overloading, Nobel Prize-winning sex with you that would give teenage me a nosebleed and will absolutely haunt me for the rest of my mortal existence?_

_Ten out of ten. Homerun. Would do it again. Three Michelin stars._

_Like I knew without a doubt it was gonna be very excellent, righteous, completely exhausting, truly choice sex; it’s us. But it still absolutely was unquantifiably more than all that._

_Every little thing seems better when it’s with you._

_All this to say, I feel how you feel. I’m really, hopelessly in love with you. I know you feel that way about me. You’re reading this in a letter because I’m a letter writer. I don’t need a letter from you because you’re a show-er, and you’ve been showing it ever since you seemed to start feeling it. To be honest, you really aren’t good at not showing. And that’s good—it’s so good._

_You’ve got so much to give and you actually want to give all of it. I think you’re probably the single best possible person out there to have as a girlfriend. I’m honored and humbled to date you._

_And I feel just really completely achingly sad that I’m leaving you for now. That I don’t know when I get to be near you next. I know that’s how you’re feeling._

_We’ll figure it out. We’ll talk about it, then talk about it some more, and we’ll keep doing all those things we’ve been doing. What you want looks a lot like what I want, I think. So we’ll make it work, even if it takes a while to get there._

_If you’re in it, I’m in it._

_In the meantime, it really sucks when you have to deal with things that make you sad. I’m not a fan of it, especially when I’m drooling unconsciously on some stranger sitting next to me in Economy and can’t do anything to keep you company in sadness._

_To distract you from having to go through a lot of shitty mixed feelings alone while I’m in the air, the next several pages of this letter are going to be me talking to you at length about completely unrelated concerns-free things._

_If you get through all of it before my cell’s back on, send me some fun stuff to look through on the cab ride from the airport. Some free suggestions: facts about Impressionists you haven’t told me yet, song lyrics you’re thinking about workshopping, flirtatious nudes, images of lizards with laughing effects edited onto them. I would be into any of those._

_Anyway without further ado, here's a story about how my Abuelita once clocked another doctor in the face at a nursing assistant's baby shower…_

As promised, the letter goes on for several more pages. She isn't sure when Riley had found time to even write this while here, but she's unimaginably grateful she wrote it and left it waiting here for Abby under her pillow that still smells of her presence.

She turns carefully to her side, gravity pulling water down from the corner of her eye that's pressing into the soft fabric beneath her cheek as she lets her eyelids meet for the space of three full breaths. Lungs full of rosemary and mint, she opens her eyes and begins to read again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to note that every single thing these gays discussed about objects up butts is a true detail from treasured anecdotes from my sister-in-law's work experience, so shoutouts to her for being a real MVP. 
> 
> Did I just describe what my partner and I cooked for the two of us this year during the Friendsgiving scene? Yes I did. Write what you eat. 
> 
> This beefy boy of a chapter marks a halfway point in this fic so there is also a lil surprise next chapter. Switching things up a bit; I'm hoping you'll enjoy it!
> 
> I appreciate every read, kudo, and bookmark and I love every comment! Especially since it's so dang un-Christmasy this year and my tired ass is doing its best in general but /gestures vaguely to everything. So please let me know what you think and how you liked it :]
> 
> If you'd like to hit me up for any reason, I'm reachable at a bunch of internet spots listed in my profile: Tumblr, Twitter, IG, Ko-Fi. Generally go by (@)somonastic across the board. I have an overabundance of thoughts while writing so still considering using Tumblr as a home for some behind-the-scenes on each chapter; lemme know if there's any interest!
> 
> Have a nice day friend, and let's all hope that next year maybe we get to safely celebrate all our favorite gay holidays in full force once more.


	5. The universe was really kind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A start to the second half of our story as seen by the second half of our pair. Belated Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and generally pleasant season to you all dear readers.

Apartment’s same as she’d left it, of course. It’s been empty the past five days after all. Flicking the lights on when she shuffles tiredly through the doorway doesn’t make the space any warmer or more inviting and she hadn’t expected it to.

The return trip had gone as anticipated: seventy-six minutes of sleeping upright bookended by thinking about how good the days in Pittsburgh had been and how wrong it felt to leave them behind, which had little to do with the city and everything to do with Abby who lived there.

As soon as rubber had hit runway and the plane was hurtling land-bound to their gate, her phone had been back on and an awaiting string of messages confirmed Abby had read the lengthy letter she’d left under the pillow before they’d headed out to the airport together. 

She’s read all those messages at least once by now and had let Abby know when she’d touched down, climbed into a Lyft, been dropped off at her building. After removing shoes, jacket, and pocket contents and depositing her suitcase by the door of her bedroom she shrugs into a random tee and pair of sweats and allows herself to sink boneless onto her bed. 

Despite exhaustion she won’t sleep yet. Exhaustion is her most common state of existence and is trumped right now by a dull emptiness that she wants to fill as soon as possible. As much as communication with each other is second nature any opportunity they get, the schedule of a resident doctor means she’s gone much longer than this without speaking with Abby. But those gaps were when she’d been up and about ordering lab tests, staring at slides, and consulting with GI, not suspended thirty thousand feet in the atmosphere with nothing else to distract her from simply pining the hours away. And usually she hasn’t just had a hundred hours of precious time being in the same place as her girlfriend to make the longing all the more acute.

“Hey!” Abby calls out after half a ring. 

Riley breathes relief out her lungs, inhales a little more calm with every breath. Switching her phone to speaker and setting it next to her on the pillow she turns on her side, closing her eyes.

“Hi Abs,” she returns.

“Which laughing lizard was your favorite?” 

“It’s disrespectful to not acknowledge the beauty and nobility of each of them, but the one where the lizard's got like no neck and its head is tilted back and it says _'hhhehehe'_ really spoke to me.”

“Excellent taste,” Abby says, a smile clear in her tone. “Eat anything? You should try to get something in you before sleeping. Hydrate too.” 

“I immediately regret putting myself back into a situation where doing that requires me to use my own lifeless body to willingly leave this bed and physically complete each of those actions instead of having you spoil me and directly lower grapes into my mouth like an emperor.”

“This life is hard, I know babe.”

Snorting out a muffled short laugh-groan, she picks her phone up and trudges from bed to kitchen to acquire water to put in her body as requested. She’d probably have just passed out instantly upon hitting the bed if Abby hadn’t asked her to do this and if she hadn’t called Abby in the first place. All in all it’s better for her this way.

Standing in front of the fridge, waiting for the glass pressed to the door’s water dispenser to finish filling, her eyes drift to a small slip of paper magneted just below her calendar. 

The note on the paper begins:

 _Hey Riley_ —

_Figured somebody should really help keep you alive while you’re keeping other people alive._

She looks at this note at least once daily and as habit every time she heads out for a shift so she absolutely has its short simple message memorized. The first line is joking in tone, but it's a lot more accurate than Abby had maybe realized when writing it. Maybe the note and the box it came with and the half dozen notes and boxes that followed haven’t been the hinge point for a life or death dilemma, but they give her a little bit of what she needs day to day to keep feeling like she can do this.

“I’m glad you’re home now,” Abby’s voice calls on speakerphone. “Well _your_ home I mean, your apartment of course. Instead of stuck on a plane y’know, not instead of here with me.”

She knows what Abby’s getting at, that “home” feels inaccurate to call either of their separate living spaces now that they’ve experienced the concept of a shared “ _our_ home” between them.

“Yeah, Big Air really does not consider you human until you’re _minimally_ in Economy Plus. It’ll be nice to sleep horizontally again,” the glass fills and Riley takes a few sips of chilled water, steps towards her room again. “Of course it’d be nice to have company in bed. That’s a downgrade now.”

“Yeah…” Abby sounds wistful on her end then adds in a tone clearly aiming for levity, “I could buy you a body pillow if you like. I won’t even be insulted if you want it to be of someone other than me.”

“Of course I want you,” she replies quickly. “Make sure pillow-Abby’s dressed in business casual so she’ll be appropriate for me to bring to any resident and family events.”

She fishes around in her bag chucked at the end of her bed for one of each type of travel snack Abby had packed her (crammed into one giant ziploc _“so they’re easier to pull out for security_ _—god it is embarrassing if you hold the line up even a little, they judge you so hard for being munchy!”_ ) Pinching opposite ends of the thin foil bag, she pulls the cheez-its open and pops a few in her mouth with a crunch, figuring she’ll tackle the snack medley with a loose multi-course meal logic for the heck of it—savory cheez-its first, then vaguely healthy fruit snack, s’mores granola bar for dessert. 

“So I’m pretty sure your Abuelita’s my new hero.” 

“Aw babe, glad you’re joining the club!” Riley laughs. “She does often have that effect. You kind of either stan her or are terrified of her. Also a sensible choice to be both.”

“Sign me the hell up please. I want to be her when I grow up.”

“You wanna punch misogynist orthopedic surgeons in the face?” 

“Someone has to!” Abby laughs. “But seriously, I really admire everything she’s accomplished. Seems like she’s also a pretty great mom and grandma on top of that; you always sound really fond of her.”

“Mhm. She really is. Again, can be terrifying but she loves you like there's no tomorrow.”

“Reminds me of my Babcia. I feel like they’d have got on. I would love to meet your Abuelita someday.”

Riley lets herself picture it for a moment, introducing her girlfriend to one of the most important people in her life. It's an easy image to paint in her head—Abby, who's become incredibly dear to her, grinning shyly down at her Abuelita whose vibrant presence looms ten times larger than her misleading stature, who is every bit a resilient inspiring matriarch, and whose determined hard work had laid the foundation of her life. 

“I think she’d like that too. I can’t really imagine her not loving you.”

“Because of what a distinguished formidable family woman I, too, am?”

“Because you’re so tiny and adorable, and you’re smart, nice, and crazy about me. She’ll probably squish your face and stuff you full of food.” 

“And I cannot say no to grandparents so I will not resist. Please resuscitate me if I die of food overload.”

“I gotcha, Abs,” she winks, amused.

Abby laughs and grins at her and it feels really satisfying to be the cause of her grinning and laughter. Her eyes soften and her smile gentles, some thought almost visibly drifting from her head down to her lips. 

“Thank you for the letter, Rilo,” Abby says after a while, with a warm weight to it. “It did help. And...it means so much to me, more than I can say. At least right now. I want to keep talking about it like you said.” 

Riley smiles. “Of course. Thank you for a really great time this weekend. For everything.”

They’re quiet for a moment, settling back into that shared liminal space they create to bridge distance between them. Not quite face to face anymore but never completely without each other.

“You ready to hit the hay, you think? I’d hate to keep you from resting up since you’re back at that good ol' doctor grind tomorrow.”

“ _Yeahhh_ it’s inescapably a slog the day after a vacation but I’d better squeeze in as many hours as I can before I need to be conscious and upright.”

Abby hums affirmatively into the quiet between them again. Riley recalls the ease of falling asleep next to Abby, how simple it is when they’re huddled together in blankets to mumble a careless _‘night_ into the air—of not even needing to say goodnight when they'll both be right there in the morning. She knows a few hundred miles away Abby is thinking the same. Goodnight is not goodbye, but it’s a little too close to it for their liking now.

Still, she says finally, “Goodnight, Abs,” because she has to and then adds, “I love you.”

“I love you too, Riley,” Abby replies softly right away. “See you in the morning.”

//

The world waits for no one, and less so for doctors than most. Feeling like warm death never keeps Riley from opening her eyes to stare at the ceiling until her vision adjusts, swinging one leg then the other out of bed, and silencing her second and final alarm. 

Traverse the clothing piles dotted about the floor on the way to the bathroom. Wash face, brush teeth, pee, shower. Stare at self in the mirror for one full minute while sifting through sleepiness, various sore spots and neck cricks, and an increasingly familiar hollow-heart feeling in order to recall what’s ahead of her today, what she needs to prepare for, why she continues to do any of this day after day.

She’s thought more than once about just not continuing, calling it a good run and finding something else to do with her life. But she won’t. Not because of family expectations, bragging rights, or a six figure future holding her back. She wants this. Despite this decade-long phase of her life being one endless ride of late nights, memorization, countless strangers counting on her, working through a thousand different tasks a thousand different times—past all of that work she knows this is something she has wanted her whole life and will keep on wanting. 

So the routine continues and she rises capably, if groggily, to meet it. Twenty minutes later with half a buttered toasted bagel and a Le Chat Noir mug of coffee (Abby had sent her a caramel apple blend for fall) in her system she shrugs into a wrinkle-resistant button down, some slim grey slacks, and a pair of sneaker-soled brogues and gathers the rest of her stuff so she can be out the door and on her way. 

//

People are usually surprised to learn (if they bother to ask what she actually does and not just shove an off-looking rash in front of her face) how much time she spends in an environment more akin to an average nine-to-five office than the bustling hospital hallway sets of Scrubs or Grey’s Anatomy. When most people think “doctor” they’re picturing white coat, clip board, stethoscope, rushing from room to room to stand before waiting patients and interview them about symptoms or their diet or how their current dosage of meds is going. 

While Riley has certainly done plenty of all that—has performed quite well across the different rotations and specialties she’s tried out—being a pathologist is something that takes a bit more educational hand-holding for people in well-meaning but ultimately insincere casual conversation to get on board with. 

And if they do bother to absorb her explanations it isn’t uncommon for her to then face the joys of fielding assumptions and questions about, _“Ah, not a people person then, are you? Sure sure, not everyone’s great face to face”_ or a couple times even, _“Oh but look at you dear! You’re plenty pretty enough to be talking directly with patients.”_

Sure her face seems to do well enough for itself, not that she's interested in strangers sharing their opinions on it. And she knows and has been told she has strong one-on-one rapport with patients, a good balance of trustworthy authority and compassionate approachability that took some work for her to develop. Wildly misguided and inappropriate commenters would be shocked however to know those details in fact have nothing to do with her choice in career path. 

When she gets into the Residents Room, Fatima gives her a small wave from her desk near the door which Riley returns with a nod and half-smile. Many residents here don’t do peppy morning greetings. They’re all awake and alert for work but it’s understood everyone’s redirecting the energy required for that from other areas like superficial upbeat socialization. Her fellow residents are all friendly and fantastic at what they do, and collectively there are no expectations to force extra layers of social nicety on top of these important qualities this early in the morning.

Like clockwork she pulls her chair out, folds her coat over the back of it, slides her bag under the desk after pulling her laptop from it, docks the laptop, and settles into her seat, rolling forward and leaning into the backrest while she waits for her machine to boot up. 

She looks absentmindedly around her small space for a few moments. Since it’s a workspace, she keeps it tidier than her apartment. Other than her monitors and microscope there’s a selection of books she references most often, a few standard office supplies like pens and notebooks, and a small curated collection of mementos: a few pictures of her family at holidays or on vacation, a colorful lumpy pinch pot her favorite kid cousin had made and gifted to her, a small jar of coins she's collected from countries she's been to. 

Zipping a small compartment of her bag open she removes a long narrow strip of paper and props it careful against the glass jar. Four squares, each an image of her and Abby crammed into a drag venue lobby photobooth in various poses, look back at her now. 

She looks for several moments more before blinking slowly, taking a measured breath, and diving into her work for today's shift. 

//

At around one she pauses to grab some lunch from the cafeteria _—_ today some kind of chicken wrap, bag of kettle chips, and a juice that’s supposedly half veggies but blessedly just tastes like fruit. Never much variety to be found in the food on the medical campus or in the hospital but it’s always fine, available, and it’s covered through the program so she’d possibly die without it given the regrettably low energy she has for most responsibilities outside the scope of work. 

Chewing around a bite of dry stringy chicken, bland tortilla, lettuce, and a splorch too much dressing _—_ a little bit of the worst of all worlds _—_ she remembers dry-brined turkey everyone had taken a turn at trying to carve the neatest, silky garlic mashed potatoes she'd pressed through a ricer, a warm herby scratch-made stuffing fed to her straight from the pot via wooden cooking spoon, creamy green bean casserole, pumpkin pie that had become a fantastic breakfast the next day, and most of all kicking back with John and Abby as naturally as if it were a typical scene from their daily lives. 

The most unremarkably mediocre lunch wrap in the world, she can muddle through fine. Not everyday can be a holiday feast. That last bit though—that feeling of being near people who create home for you—is frankly hard to come by when she’s far away from her girlfriend and kept busy by residency. And it’s not like there’s no one around her that she likes; she isn’t so thoroughly isolated as that. She isn't a totally antisocial hermit who hates or avoids the people she sees on a daily basis.

Aptly, a couple of her fellow residents happen to be taking lunch now as well, walking towards her carrying their respective lunches and chatting. 

“Hey Riley!” Fatima greets as they approach, taking seats across from her. “How was your holiday? You went out of town right?”

She’s got a tiffin of homemade brinjal rice, cucumber salad, and kheer for lunch today. Riley wills her stomach not to grumble covetously at the spiced scents now wafting about. 

“Pittsburgh, yeah,” she smiles in greeting. “Yeah it was really nice. I had a great time—ate a ton, saw a show, went to a museum.”

“Mhmm. And your girlfriend?” Marcus says next to Fatima, grinning while unwrapping his turkey and swiss on rye, cut into triangles. 

She knows he often brings the same lunch for himself that his husband has made for their first and third graders that day; easier to just assemble four in a row of the same lunch while navigating the daily household chaos each morning or evening.

“Ahh right, the whole point of the trip. That must've been _exciting!_ ” Fatima chimes in. 

They're grinning so conspiratorially that Riley feels a matching grin of her own growing. Their whole cohort of residents on different years as well as the fellows they share a floor with all get along reasonably well, but these two are among the few colleagues she's closest with. So while they aren't as familiar with Abby as John had been with Riley even before they'd met, she's told them a little about her girlfriend. Seemed like the thing to do since Abby has become such a prevalent part of her life. 

“The best part, of course,” Riley says truthfully. “Definitely the part I’m missing most.”

Marcus and Fatima offer congratulations, smiling excitedly at her as they begin to ask some miscellaneous follow-up questions about how it had felt to finally be in the same place, how it went staying at Abby’s apartment, if her cooking was as good as her baking (a small sampling of which she’d occasionally shared with them from her care packages).

It’s pleasant talking about her fond memories of the past handful of days since her mind keeps drifting to them throughout the day anyway. The downside is that the more she verbally acknowledges how great being there had been, the more the reality of being _here_ instead solidifies. It’s only her first day back and already she’s feeling the weight of it. 

Fatima and Marcus seem perhaps to notice the dip in her mood because they share a glance then Fatima says, “Sounds like you had a really special time together. Abby seems _fantastic_ ; she should come out here for a visit sometime. I’d _love_ to meet her too!”

Marcus nods in agreement and Riley quirks a corner of her lip up, offering a small appreciative smile. 

“I’m sure I’ll get her out here sooner or later,” Riley says, hopefully manifesting this into the universe. “When she’s in town you two will be the second and third people around here to know, right after me.”

Her coworkers chuckle and Fatima turns the conversation to requesting that Marcus recount any antics from his annual large family gathering, especially anything related to his two lively kids and their handful of equally rambunctious cousins. 

As the two of them chat animatedly Riley slides her phone from her pocket and looks down at it. Her only new notification is an email from her apartment’s management reminding her that water will be shut off for an hour tomorrow afternoon. There’s around a seventy to eighty percent chance on average that any time she checks her phone while on shift that there’ll be some message from Abby waiting for her. She understands Riley doesn’t really text while working so mostly the messages are brief little greetings, check-ins, or encouragements (sometimes in meme form) that Abby never expects a timely response to. 

Riley feels almost a bit spoiled at this point by how rarely she checks her phone at work and finds it devoid of some thoughtful patient little offering from Abby. Still, they’re both busy people with schedules to keep. It isn’t at all unreasonable for Abby to not have sent a message yet since this morning, especially since her post-vacation return to work is likely keeping her as occupied as Riley’s is. 

Wrap consumed and conversation finishing up a few minutes later, she gathers her lunch detritus to deposit in trash and recycling and preps her brain to transition back into pathologist mode. Only ten more hours to go. 

//

Busy and challenging as they are, her days go by pretty quickly, turning to a week, then two weeks, then— 

In what feels simultaneously like ages and an eyeblink, Abby’s leant over carefully brushing black onto her nails on Riley's screen and saying to her, “Can you believe it’s that time of year again?” 

“You know I have no sense for a normal passage of time anymore,” Riley says, looking up from the pile of clean laundry she's folding and shrugging. “My life’s a blur of surviving night shifts by shotgunning single serving packets of peanut butter with crackers but also it feels like it’s been at least half a year since Thanksgiving y’know?”

“That is true. I think I’ve got to be hitting some kind of record for students nearly passing out from exhaustion during office hours. I’ve had to talk more than a few of them back from total breakdown in the past week.”

Riley grins. “You’re a good man, Professor Holland. It’s your vibes probably. Their overstretched undergrad emotional health can sense you’ll offer them your nonjudgmental adult advice and reassurance if they make a mournful pout in your direction.”

“I mean it’s not strictly in my job description but I feel for them.”

“You’re doing great, babe. It's good you're there for them; college really can suck and be unhealthily stressful,” Riley says, remembering what some of her own college experience had been like. 

“I hear ya. Going into freshman year I figured I could keep getting A's while maintaining healthy balanced habits—sleep, eating, exercising, hygiene, socializing, all that—if I just worked hard and scheduled my time,” Abby says shaking her head. 

“Having expectations is the hubris of our species.”

“Yep. Yours _and_ your professors’. Every prof assumes their class is your _only_ class or at least the most important. I really try to keep that in mind and do my best to not kill these kids with overload.”

Riley grins at Abby, starting a second stack of folded underwear to avoid her own hubristic catastrophe in the form of collapse of the now tall first stack.

“Guarantee I’d have been one of those kids not even in the major who just walked into your office periodically on a whim hoping to hang around some faculty that actually gave a shit about me.”

Abby smiles back, brush hand paused midair, and says, “I can't solve my students’ problems but giving a shit about them I can definitely offer.”

Giving a shit really is one of Abby's talents. She truly gives a genuine fuck about the people who are in her life, apparently even if they're only peripherally so as with students. Refreshing when you think about how anti-giving fucks many folks are.

“So,” Riley says, beginning to pluck all the socks from her pile, “how’s your pet sitting queue for this year?”  
  
“Not bad! Manageable. Got the _sweetest_ lil’ banana ball python named Oatmeal. One of John’s friends who’s gonna be in Austin for over a week has like _five_ cats so I’m hoping they’ll like me enough that after a few days of feeding I can just lie on the floor and they’ll all sit on me purring and filling me with their rumbles until I fall asleep.”

The excitement on Abby's face and in her posture at that prospect is very cute and very unrestrainedly obvious. Riley keeps her eyes on the socks she's matching up and folding just to give herself a moment to process how endearing her girlfriend's enthusiasm is.

“So how long has this been a life dream of yours? Because it feels kind of specific.”

“Hell _yes_ it is. Babcia had this incredible maine coon when I was a kid— _gorgeous_ cat. Once in a while she’d bless you by taking a nap on you and her purr would just like vibrate the _entire_ couch.”

“Fuck that actually sounds incredible. Maine coons are goddamn majestic, like dog-sized house cats with beautiful shampoo commercial hair. They all look like they belong in wildlife calendars.”

“So what I'm _hearing_ is someday in the future if I bring a giant cat into our home...”

“I will immediately accept and love it as my child, yes.”

She's sincere on that. But it also can't escape her notice how Abby had said _“our home.”_ Neither of them calls attention to it as Abby closes her eyes feelingly and attempts to clench her fists in celebration but ends up half-clenching them in a claw grip to avoid messing up her now complete still wet paintjob. 

“Fantastic! Great to know for reference. Harper and I had never actually managed to have _the talk_ while living together.”

Riley smirks amusedly, curious what Abby’s going to reveal _the talk_ to be and prompts her, “Aw, did you _also_ not realize Harper was gay?”

Abby barks a laugh and shakes her head. 

“We never figured out our future potential pet situation. I am a friend to all animals of course, but I grew up with cats so I always pictured myself getting at least one kitty of my own. Harper’s more of a dog person so maybe we’d have been a mixed pet household.”

“Ah yes, the Caldwells had a sheltie when we were growing up— _Bailey Louise Caldwell_ —and Tipper was _intensely_ into agility competitions so Harp spent a lot of time around dogs while helping her out at events,” Riley recalls. “I came with once or twice. Dog Show Tipper is actually _more_ hardcore perfectionist than Christmas Eve Party Host Tipper so it wasn’t exactly the most fun environment.”

“Oh god I’ll bet. I would _never_ subject our beautiful gigantic cat child to that kind of stress. They don’t need to prove anything with ribbons; we will raise them with amazing self-esteem.”

Riley grins, holding a shirt up next to her to shake the wrinkles out before laying it down to fold. “So I assume we're hyphenating or stacking our names for the kid; are you thinking Holland-Bennett? Bennett-Holland?”

“Oo not sure on order but _obviously_ we're getting both names in there. The more surnames you've got the more dignified you are.”

“Oh well if _that's_ what makes you dignified you should know I'm actually Bennett Barros legally. That Spanish tradition of dual surnames.”

“Oh shit, I _love_ that. Barros is your mother's maiden name then?”

“Mm well she never changed it—always been Barros Huerta or Dr. Barros. Moving forward I'm planning on going by the combo of both my surnames personally and professionally.”

“You should! I mean instant dignified points there for double names plus I really like the sound of it: _Dr. Bennett Barros_. That's a really cool tradition.”

Riley hadn't put much thought into names until partway into college. Now it's a point of pride, a reminder of what she comes from. From her Abuelita, Dr. Huerta to Dr. Barros, her Mamá and now... 

“Thanks, Abs. It feels right. Having part of my Mom and Abuelita there every time someone calls me Dr. Bennett Barros, honoring them in a way.”

“That's beautiful, Rilo. I know how important they are to you. A three generation tradition? That's pretty dang impressive. I'm sure they're ridiculously proud of you. I certainly am.”

Abby does look proud, wide smile pushing her cheeks up, reaching her bright eyes.

“Plus,” Riley adds, an afterthought, “ _love_ to push back on racist microaggressions day to day. You'd be surprised there are still some patients _and_ professionals who'll already be weird, possibly unconsciously, about women doctors.”

“On the one hand yes; on the other hand we all know misogyny ain't dead yet.”

“Fact. So you can imagine it's sometimes an even bigger ordeal for them to process _una doctora boricua_. ‘specially when lots of them want to just read me as white," she says in half irritation, half dry resigned amusement. “Back in Ridley plenty of adults with purchased Ivy League degrees visibly struggle like three year olds to pronounce Barros.”

“Tipper and Ted did just refer to your family as the Bennetts.”

“Haha but they're _so_ traveled and cultured! Did Ted tell you about the summer he spent sailing the rugged seas aka lounging on his dad's yacht?”

“No but he did regale me with how he lived in Paris and hung around museums after graduating. It made him the man he is today, you know,” Abby jokes. “This of course was his follow-up when I told him I'm in art history—answering a question _he_ asked me in the first place.”

“No doubt his story was very relevant and relatable to you.”

“I relate _so_ much.”

“See? You gotta do what you can to mess with ’em, it's only right. _I'll_ make people struggle through addressing me by an incredibly straightforward Latina name, _you_ inform the Tedmunds of the world that having yacht-loads of cash is not the same thing as knowing anything about art. I know you're too polite for it but I will be your wingman in taking douchebags down a peg.”

“ _Pact_ , I'm in.”

Sharing a laugh, they hold their pinkies out towards each other like a solemn promise but undercut by their matching grins. 

Most of their conversations are like this, meandering their way through the day-to-day, coaxing smiles and laughs from each other, venting, sharing tidbits about themselves. As duty hours usher her through days, weeks, such conversations carry her when she is tired, lonely, unsure. 

Soon enough _“that time of year again”_ as Abby had harkened goes from just rapidly approaching to being suddenly right here, with Abby resuming her comfortable mantle of holiday pet sitter and Riley hours deep into sleep on a fairly quiet Puerto Rico bound flight. 

//

Ian looks about the same as when she'd last seen him, his frame still lanky and long, curly hair a bit wilder, trademark affable grin on his face. He looks well suited to the old world styled hotel lobby they’re meeting in, in his smart but casual white light linen button down and cool pale grey seersucker trousers, sleeves rolled and hems cuffed loosely at the ankles, shirt effortlessly French tucked with a couple top buttons left undone, an old silver watch with clean lines and a deep brown leather band that had once belonged to their Abuelito on his wrist. You’d never recognize him next to a photo of him as a college freshman who’d gone around almost exclusively in pullover hoodies, cargo shorts, and flip flops. 

It’s a little weird sometimes to think they’re both god honest adults now with jobs, apartments, and workplace appropriate outfits that could be called fashionable, although she knows his little extra bit of effort—including the thankfully not overpowering spritz of sea breeze scent—is for the benefit of their parents (especially their mom) who’ll be arriving in another few hours. Even as adults they haven’t yet reached the point of being homefree of parents double checking that they look and smell respectable, if such a point exists.

“Qué tal, sis? You snore like a congested chainsaw on the plane?” he says as he stops in front of her, wrapping his long arms around her in a tight quick squeeze of a hug.

“No idea,” she responds, muffled into his shoulder briefly. “Way too knocked out to notice.”

He laughs brightly in a way that relaxes her, reminds her she’s missed him. Ian’s always been a decent older brother despite being the more impulsive and careless of the two of them. Ultimately he’s always had her back. During her rough high school years she’d missed him especially and he’d sorely regretted being already away at college and unable to be around more to support her. But they have a pretty good comfortable adult siblinghood. They keep in touch not constantly but regularly, will occasionally call each other to rant about some problem, ask advice, or just catch up.

Seven minutes later they're sharing an umbrella-shaded table on the patio of a small restaurant just down the street from the hotel, catching up over a huge tripleta and maltas with a bonus bag of Platanutres. It’s been ages since she’s had a tripleta this authentic and it is very much hitting the spot. If you can count on Ian for one thing wherever you are it’s probably that he’s hit up all the best cheap eats. 

“Work’s good mostly,” he says in response to the question she's asked him, “just an ongoing challenge. True sustainability’s been the big push in recent years, for everything—the land, the wildlife, our infrastructure. Plus accessibility, especially in electricity with lots of growth in solar. There’s a _ton_ of work going on across all fronts and the pressure’s high since we can’t exactly guarantee a pause on huge acts of nature while we’re trying to get as stable as possible. Which is, y’know, interesting for the work but a bummer and stressful for our actual goals.”

“Hard to secure coastlines and civilization against natural disasters while natural disasters continue to happen.”

He nods, mouth already way too full of about a third of his half of the sandwich for speech. His hunger’s always been notorious in their family so it only takes him a few moments of rapid chewing to free up his vocal capacity again and then he’s already plunging his hand into the Platanutres.

“Right. I mean I assume it's sorta like that for you, yea? You enjoy being a disease detective but it's not just academic once you're out in the field. Can't forget people's lives are on the line.”

She hums in agreement then makes a satisfied sound through chewing a hefty bite of soft bread, perfectly seasoned pernil, classic mayo ketchup, and thin crispy papas that she savors before washing it down with a quick swig of malta. Every bite's a little different, her next one full of grilled steak and a bit of ham, gooey melted cheese, with the crispness of lettuce and sweetness of caramelized onion. Christ, it’s a good sandwich.

This whole meal they’re sharing takes her straight back to the two of them hanging around the house after school and she wishes she could pass this deeply nostalgic humble sandwich to Abby for a bite, watch her be blown away in realtime at its explosion of layered flavors and textures. It feels somehow like if Abby could taste a tripleta like this she'd have another intimate piece of Riley, understand another of her facets.

She remembers slowly her current talk with Ian; he appears to not have noticed her attention drifting given his own ravenous approach to his food. 

“Mm true,” she finally responds after thinking on his observation a bit. “I'm never bored really since I see something new every day but there are times when I kind of just want to turn it all off for a while.”

Those times occasionally feel like they're either growing more frequent or becoming harder to ignore.

“Aw, we both went with mentally stimulating and emotionally exhausting livelihoods,” she muses wryly. 

Ian grins and holds his bottle up so they can toast to their life choices. 

“At least it's not killing your romantic life though, huh?” he smiles and leans forward like he's been keenly anticipating the fresh chismes segment of their conversation. “How're things with Abby?”

“Pretty great, other than being in different states. Worst thing about our relationship so far is just the geography of it. Thanksgiving was…honestly wonderful. Kind of can't stop thinking about it.”

He looks at her with warm eyes and a gentle smile, quirks his head a little as though quietly studying her.

“Didn't want to have a cute Puerto Rican Christmas together, cozy up in your hotel room, introduce her to la familia?” he teases. 

They had discussed it actually but it would've been a stretch to make happen, as much as they'd wanted more time together. 

“She finishes her doctorate in the spring so currently she's both: A, swamped with dissertation milestones and course prep for her next semester of assistantship and B, not super flush with travel money at the moment.”

“Fair,” Ian nods. “If you keep going strong—I'm rooting for you since you seem _super_ gay for each other—I'll want to meet your little professor at some point though and I know Ma and Pop will too.”

“Abby would love to meet all of you. She's stoked to meet Abuelita already.”

“Oh my god,” he nearly gasps. “ _Yesss wepaaa!_ This girl is in it to _win_ it. Abuelita’s going to love having a new tiny precious fan.”

Yeah, Riley’s pretty excited about the concept too. She's never reached the point of wanting to introduce a girlfriend to her Abuelita, not since Harper who'd met her once or twice as kids because they'd been best friends then, before they grew into more and then fell apart. 

“And what about you?” she asks to clear those particular memories from her brain at the moment. “Any beau to introduce to the fam?”

“Nah, not any time soon. Dating around a little but nothing serious in a while and I'm cool with that,” he says shrugging, crunching a handful of garlicky platano chips then licking the seasoning from his fingertips and wiping them on his napkin.

Pulling out his phone, tapping on it and swiping a few times, he turns it to her and says with a grin, “Got a couple _fun_ post-Christmas dates lined up though.”

She looks down at the screen and watches as he walks her through a few flirty DM exchanges and pictures of his two future dates—one a gentle looking, robustly bearded burly fella in a white coat with a puppy in each hand who logically must be a veterinarian, the other a dark haired woman with cat-eye glasses, a septum piercing, and a very nice geometric sleeve tattoo on her left arm posing in front of a brick wall mural she probably worked on given the paint speckled jumpsuit she's wearing.

“ _Fun_ ,” she smirks, eyebrows raised. “Impressed by his dwarven beard and absurd biceps. _She's_ got some nice ink, pulling off those glasses well. Respect.”

“Hey text me Abby's address later, will you? So I can send her a thank you card for being the only thing standing between you and stealing my date before I've even shaken her hand, you insatiable lesbian.”

This is one of the big things they've bonded over as adults, Ian's still somewhat new queerness. He hadn't noticed his own bisexuality until a couple years ago at which point he’d promptly called Riley out of the blue to declare this to her and ask her for any advice she could give. 

She's grateful his experience with self discovery and coming out has been so vastly different from her own. Even though he's the older of them he's so much newer to understanding himself as queer, so it's nice to be able to channel her experiences into helping him however she can.

Plus it's not like he's a teenager whose life can be easily ruined by pubescent bullies. He'd already been away when her personal high school hell had broken loose and he's lived elsewhere ever since, so he's about a decade removed from the attentions of their fickle town’s busybodies. So while their family doesn't hide Ian's queerness any more than Riley's it simply has never gathered much interest or condemnation. Further proof that as soul sucking as the bubble of your judgmental hometown is, a bubble it remains; eventually it pops and can no longer hold such power over your life. 

“Hey,” Riley holds her hands up in mock surrender, “ _you’re_ the one slandering my good character. _Me_ , a happily taken woman, intercept your date? Poor conduct. I’d never.”

“Good. As long as you promise. Since you’re not going to spend your time ruining my romantic prospects you could always be my wingman.”

“I will not be doing that either. Again, happily taken, so I’d rather not join you on a date with someone else unless I’m with _my_ girlfriend and I don’t know if your dates are ready to sit across from my phone propped on the table with Abby on vid call for an entire dinner.”

“Maybe not,” he agrees with a laugh. “I’m happy for you though little sis, I really am. From everything you've told me she sounds like a keeper. Honestly I’m a _pretty_ hot catch so I don’t need a wingman assist anyway.”

“Oh, _that_ right there is great. People love impenetrable confidence.”

“ _But_ ,” he carries on, “maybe in the future I’ll be turning to you again for advice on actual long term adult relationships if what you two are up to all goes well, huh?”

Riley smiles. “I think there’s a good chance of that. Deal.” 

They shake hands with playful gravity. 

“And then you can ask Abby about it and she’ll go nuts getting way too invested in answering properly and you’ll end up with an entire dissertation’s worth of advice.” 

Abby sitting in front of him with a binder tucked under her arm, chock-full of gathered anecdotes, recommendation lists of vetted romantic media, and a full paper of her breaking down her philosophies on love is so easy to imagine that the picture’s in her head before she can even finish speaking the thought. She would love such a scene to be real someday and to sit next Abby as it unfolds, watching her quietly with the same irrepressible grin and warm rhythmic pounding that’s in her chest right now. 

//

When they meet up a few hours later with their parents there's some spark there of her childhood Christmases despite the radically different setting and all of them being much older. Ma folds them both into a giant embrace at once, a strong arm braced around each of their backs, and peppers them with exaggerated noisy kisses before then hugging them each in turn as tightly as safely possible. One after the other they share a warm hug with their quietly grinning Pop and peck him on the cheek as he happily notes they're looking well. 

Feeling lazy after their flight, their parents elect to settle into their room to relax for a couple hours before going anywhere else. So Ian and Riley take their bags and accompany them up to their suite on the floor above Riley's room. The four of them lounge around the suite’s sitting area like they're back in their family room. 

Ian has some plans during the evening though so they opt as a group to entertain themselves for the evening and meet up again tomorrow. Her parents are taking advantage of their vacation setting and having themselves a romantic date night. And since it’s Abby and Riley’s meetiversary, they’re having a little stay-in remote date of their own. 

Riley's nestled into a comfy cushioned rattan armchair in the corner of her bright airy hotel room, the provided mug she'd poured her paper to-go cup of warm coquito into for cozier aesthetic sitting next to an array of styrofoam containers on the round matching rattan table she's commandeered. Each container encases a delicious offering from mofongo to guayaba pastries to pasteles. Basically she'd walked up and down the street and grabbed takeout of whatever most lit a craving in her from several restaurants and carts. 

Abby had insisted they do something to mark today's occasion together; nothing extravagant but still a treat. Drinks and small foods and desserts over a video call date are what they settled on. It's not like she'd needed to twist Riley's arm since they’ll still be keeping in touch daily throughout her trip despite additional international distance.

The familiar jingle chimes and she automatically accepts the call, feeling lighter as Abby's face materializes onto her screen. Her heart jumps to see her girlfriend on her couch in a holiday sweater with plates of mini quiches, pierogies, and half a dozen kinds of Christmas cookies both on the table and beside her on the couch cushions.

“Hey stud. _So_ , it's our meetiversary I hear? Happy day to you, you old so and so,” Riley gives her girlfriend a slanted smile she knows flusters Abby.

“Happy meetiversary to you too babe! _Warmest_ regards,” Abby's beaming in a way that is devastatingly endearing to Riley in turn, which Abby still maybe doesn't fully realize. “A whole year huh? Geez, we've come a _long_ way in one trip around the sun.” 

“True true. Lots of key differences between this year's holiday and last. Our surroundings for one,” Riley gestures around her at the general tastefully designed, laidback vacation atmosphere.

Even from inside the hotel room you can clearly tell she's far from white Christmas and white elephant. The interior styling reflects a breezy island sensibility mixed with a historical charm and coziness, thoughtful artistic touches everywhere. She'd never found the Caldwell house to be cozy so much as a bit more staged than a family house should feel. 

“Yes indeed,” Abby leans back to uncover more of the background in her frame, arms spread in a _ta-da!_ pose. “Wasn't even living here back then. And obviously another big one: not still in my previous relationship and _not_ optimistically planning to surprise-propose to my previous girlfriend. So _carefree_ and unaware.”

“Yeah wouldn't that _suck_ to just be repeating exactly that but with me this year? We'd have to call it a pattern, very unhealthy one at that.” 

“No thank you please. I'll promise I'm not planning to spring a sudden proposal if _you'll_ promise your parents aren't secretly here in Pittsburgh instead of San Juan and also are not actually very repressive classist conservatives.”

“ _Nooo_ ," Riley says an octave lower than normal, “‘course not. They're much more liberal.” 

Abby chuckles at Riley's implication by omission. 

“Well that's a relief. Tell your parents I'll be watching _White Christmas_ and _The Muppet Christmas Carol_ with John and gorging on his leftover latkes and gelt later but they're welcome to join whenever they’re ready.”

“ _Ah_ sorry. Can't reach ‘em from over here, international rates and all. You'll have to tell them yourself.”

Riley grabs her mug of coquito and Abby her glass of eggnog and they grin into their drinks at each other. 

“So, how _are_ your folks? How's San Juan?”

“Pretty good—and fantastic. My parents are always stoked to see Ian since he's so far from home. They'll pretty much be his entourage for the first couple days we're here."

“Ha, well that sounds cute!”

“It's pretty cute. As for San Juan, this is only my second time here but it's beautiful and full of all the best foods as last time. And any real vacation time is invaluable during residency so no complaints here. No agenda yet for what we'll get up to but there's plenty to do.”

“I read the Museo de Arte's got one of the best museum restaurants,” Abby says. “Also it's just a great museum of course, amazing botanical sculpture garden, historical building—used to be part of a municipal hospital actually—and they do such important work for preserving Puerto Rican art. But y'know.”

“Food.”

“Food,” Abby agrees, punctuating that by popping a small spinach quiche into her mouth whole. 

“I'll add it to the possibilities, although I'm not sure you haven't ruined museums for me. _How_ can I enjoy them without my favorite art historian by my side to educate me and be adorably challenged at lying?”

“I'll get to work recording audio tours for every museum you may possibly go to in the future.”

Riley nods approvingly, mouth occupied with a forkful of tender pork and mashed platano.

“One worse change between last year and this though,” Abby says, lowering her eggnog. 

“Mm?”

“Not being together in person.”

Riley closes her eyes and nods again profusely. 

“Ah, this is true. I'm glad you've got _something_ you miss from last Christmas then. Can't have been a complete apocalypse if one decent thing came of it, yea?”

Abby smiles. “Honestly? Yea. Watch out for this imminent sentimental sap: even if I didn't know it at the time, it was all well worth it to meet you, Riley.”

It's amazing how flattered you can feel just being on the other end of one of Abby's candid heartfelt statements. Whatever anyone else has in suavity can't measure up.

“Without you it'd have been a total loss. You are the one utterly good part of the worst Christmas of my life.”

Riley holds her bottle up in toast. “Happy to be, Abs.”

Abby raises her own drink and they both take a sip. A look of remembering something flashes over her and she swallows quickly, eager to add something else.

“By the way, I'm curious—what was that Christmas and meeting me like for you?" she begins. “I mean, I was so caught up flailing around my _catastrophic vortex_ of a love life at the time so I have no idea how all that must have looked from the outside.”

“It looked a lot like a catastrophic vortex surprisingly," Riley says and it's a testament to time's healing capacity that Abby just laughs under her breath and grins. “I was very much hoping you'd survive it and— _hey_! I'm pretty happy you did!”

 _“Yeah_ me too," Abby shivers half jokingly after taking a dramatized swig of creamy nog. "It made such a difference that you stepped forward and helped me out, seriously. But I’m surprised you voluntarily got involved with that mess at all. Even _more_ so that you wanted to try being friends with me after.”

“Of course I did," Riley says simply. “So you were a mess, yeah. But you were at one of your lowest points. I was meeting you on your worst days and you were _still_ someone I could tell was a really good caring person and someone who’d be great to have in your life as a friend.”

“Well it definitely wasn’t my smoothness that made you want to befriend me," Abby says ducking her head, a sure sign she's happy but embarrassed. 

“Hey, you're plenty smooth. Would you be dating _all this_ if you weren't?" Riley smiles fondly, gesturing up and down the length of her with an intense stare plus eyebrow waggle combo and earning a laugh from Abby. “And anyway, you don't need to be smooth. It can be overrated. It's clear just spending some time with you that it's something special to be cared about by you. That says plenty.”

Abby doesn't respond with words but looks back up shyly, head still ducked, and smiles brightly and— _wow_ this girl is really fuckin cute. God she lucked out. Merry fuckin Christmas, Riley Bennett Barros.

“Other than getting dragged into your ex's and your ex's very own not- _yet_ -ex's catastrophe, you seemed like _you_ were having a pretty normal Christmas; didn’t notice your family do anything insane the whole time I was around.”

“Ha, yeah. Well I don’t go into the holidays expecting much when we're staying in Ridley. Year before last we were in Austin meeting up with Mom’s whole side of the family for a reunion and to celebrate Abuelita’s seventy-fifth so it wasn't like last year was gonna exactly live up to that.”

“Shit, that sounds amazing.”

“Other than seeing my family I've got no personal attachments to Ridley anymore—no friends to catch up with, no hometown pride or memories, no interest in the gossip mill.”

“Really? You _aren’t_ a big fan of petty hyper judgmental competitive gossip?”  
  
“I _know_ it’s a real shame. I probably could’ve been a great talent at it.”

“Seems impossible to escape it even if you want to, from the brief time I was exposed to that viper pit.”

“Mm yeah I never go seeking it out but you tend to end up knowing stuff anyway from overhearing because people are just so wildly loud about rumors and _so_ eager to circulate ‘em.”

“What a way to ring in the holidays."

“Always thought so,” she scrunches her whole face into a frown at some of her least fond memories. “ _Sooo_ I pretty much show up for the usual events and mind my own business while in town. It's prickly and fake and a drag but I don't passionately hate it there anymore; it’s just a place.”

“Okay, I feel awkwardly like this is gonna come off patronizing even though I _know_ you know I would _never_ patronize you but,” Abby stumbles through her thought, “you are...like _aspirationally_ emotionally strong. Like, I feel like I should've written my personal statement for college apps about how you are my hero.” 

Riley laughs in surprise but feels this vote of confidence slide just behind her sternum, her ribs, and curl its way around her heart.

“Thank you, Abs. I appreciate that. Including the whole time traveling effort you'd have to go through to be able to do that,” she says, only the slightest teasing in her tone. “Although it's not like I'm naturally like that. I can tell you I _definitely_ was not personal statement material for a _long_ time there after what happened with Harper.”

Chewing a bite of pastry, running the tip of her tongue across her teeth to swipe at all traces of sweet fresh guava, she reflects on that harrowing phase of her life. 

“Couldn'ta done it without my parents rising to the occasion, years of weekly therapy, and prescription drugs we had to increase in dosage about four times.”

“That's exactly it though!” Abby says with conviction, slightly lifting and slamming her glass back down into its cork coaster for emphasis, “Rilo, _that's_ the hero stuff. It would be buck _wild_ and so inhuman if you'd just started out _this_ emotionally intelligent and self aware and mature with what you went through.”

Her eyes are as intense as Riley’s ever seen them and she’s leaning in to the camera like she’d reach through it and fist her fingers in Riley’s shirt fabric to drive home her unshakable sincerity if she could. 

“It's _brave_ to hang in there when it least feels like bravery to you and just feels like everything's painful or dull or garbage. The pills, the doctors, your parents—those are all so important, but _you_ are still the one who saved yourself by staying with all of that. It takes a whole fucking lot of strength just to _survive_ and even more to become stronger.”

Riley knows this. In the back of her brain she's heard similar before from loved ones and experts, has had to at times recall this knowledge like a mantra when she's hitting a low. But it's so… _comforting_ to have it from Abby, with such love and fervor behind it. It feels easier to believe coming from her because when it comes to emotion Abby only says true things.

She's unable to say anything for several moments, concentrating on breathing evenly, acknowledging the wetness gathering at the edges of her lower eyelids, swallowing the solid lump at her throat. 

Abby seems to notice she needs a minute and says more lightly, “So did you have many awkward run-ins with Harper at the annual yuletide rumor exchanges, before our fated restroom ambush?”

“Nah not really. We didn’t bump into each other that much,” Riley says, feeling her voice return with her breath. "But it wasn't all that surprising running into her either; it's not a big place. I usually see her around when in town but we never gravitated towards each other. I've only directly interacted with her a handful of times since high school.”

She'd stopped actively avoiding Harper a long time ago but that still had left little reason for them to seek each other out or converse at length when they happened to encounter each other. 

“When you saw us at the lodge we were having a genuine average little family dinner out. No drama, minding our own, no ambushing anyone with compulsory heteronormative former relationships _—_ ”

Groaning good naturedly Abby slinks down into her chair, tipping her head and drink back to wash out any trace of Connor-related misfortune, then cramming a sugar encrusted ginger molasses cookie into her mouth and chomping busily. Riley’s got no great fondness for the guy either so she tips her mug back in solidarity.

“Deepest apologies,” she notes with a slight nod. “Luckily my parents aren't super active in the same social circles the Caldwells run in. But they're used to that minefield and friendly when approached, common courtesy and all. Running into _you_ was surprising though—that spiced things up.” 

“I am known for my spice, yes,” Abby waggles her eyebrows with a goofy grin.

Riley returns the suggestive eyebrows playfully and fans herself with a hand like a Victorian mistress with a spell of the vapors before going on.

“There was a time when I’d speculated a _lot_ about what would happen to Harper’s romantic life in the future," she muses. “When I saw you I figured at first glance—hey, seems like she’s dating a woman; must be long term or she wouldn’t be in town. But oh wait, the girlfriend is lying _terribly_ —”

“No one was more embarrassed about that than me.”

"—and Harper looks scared like she had back in freshman year and appears to be waiting to see if I'll say anything. Pretty easy to deduce she must not be out, in which case apparently they’re _stealth_ meeting the parents while pretending to be straight platonic. Godspeed to _these_ two.”

“Godspeed us straight into the dumpster fire Christmas history books,” Abby pops a red and green swirled wreath-shaped spritz this time, chagrined. “Thanks for your mercy in not giving us a harder time when you easily could've.”

“Hey I had no horse in that race, and far be it from _me_ to out anyone. There was never any reason for you two to really be terrified on my account.”

“Bold of you to assume I need a _reason_ to be socially stressed out of my mind,” Abby's eyebrows raise. “First impressions of me?"

“There is _no_ earthly way this absolute lesbian is straight; no gaydar necessary just minimal awareness.”

“I’d be insulted at being clocked so easily if that weren't a _hundred_ percent the vibe I’m going for.”

Riley bites into one of the pasteles, savoring the warm blend of platano and yuca before continuing.

“You seemed chill, like someone who’d likely be cool to hang out with if she weren’t in alarms-blaring anxious DEFCON 3 panic mode,” she says and Abby looks sheepish but pleased. “I also felt bad for you since you did _not_ seem prepared for that family.”

“And _god_ you were right to be concerned. It was only just getting started at that point!” 

“Pour sweet unaware soul. I really did feel for ya. You were cute and seemed nice and the fact you were there at all was a sign you were probably a pretty damn supportive girlfriend, albeit in way over your head.”

“Suppose I could’ve made a lot worse of an impression. My first reaction to you was mostly blind panic and soul crushing awkwardness. Did notice you had sweet style though.”

“Thank you and back at’cha," Riley replies with a little flourish. “Game recognize game.”

“I had not expected on our first meeting that you’d keep showing up right when I needed you,” Abby’s eyes stare off to the side, likely in flashback. “Being caught loitering around Main Street after eating dinner alone would’ve been so _embarrassing_ again if it weren’t also _such_ a relief. I'd at least gotten the sense you were pretty nonjudgmental by then.”

“You’d grown on me pretty quickly," Riley reflects, “beyond just a drowning person I felt compelled to help. You were alone and bummed but funny, charming.”

“God _was_ I? I felt my least charming _ever_ those five days. You know I'm actually a _hit_ with parents usually? Christ what a kick in the crotch to my self-esteem.”

“That does not surprise me. You’ve probably dealt mostly with parents who _aren’t_ narcissistic sociopaths, is the thing. You still came off as a genuinely nice person and a lot more yourself when not trapped.” 

Abby smiles sadly. “I’m lucky I’d never had to seriously be closeted before then. I hated it. For like _ten_ minutes at the start I could pretend we were having a fun secret and then… I think I felt as much a stranger to myself at moments as hometown Harper did to me. It was so _toxic_ for both of us, what living like that for not even a week did to us.”

“I know, hon.”

Better than most, as they’re both quite familiar with. She’s grateful Abby hadn’t been another shame-soaked queer kid chewed up or pressed into ill-fitting molds by her childhood town. 

“I’m glad you’d looked at me and wanted to offer me a hand out of that quicksand. Guess I was pretty lucky we had a point of dating history commonality.”

“I would've wanted to hang out even without the Harper thing,” Riley corrects her. “It’s not super common to see a new face in the _exclusive_ Ridley Park upper echelons and if it’s a decent likable outsider _and_ a fellow gay? Only right to step up and be an ally, but having good company for myself was a nice completely selfish bonus.”

Bright as twinkly string lights, Abby beams as she gets another far-off look, this time cheered by whatever she’s remembering.

“I had a lot of fun with you that night. I really had _not_ been expecting to, just given how the night had started out. And unfortunately, our hangout was kind of the lovely filling between two really stale, lonely, _awkward_ pieces of bread. Overall shit sandwich, the way that night closed out,” she frowns briefly but it’s smoothed away again by a gentle smile. 

“But I’m really glad you took me to the Oxwood. I should’ve just stayed in the booth with you. Honestly it felt super rude to leave you and like ten minutes into Fratty’s I felt stupid and _really_ wished I’d stayed.”

“Nah. I mean that super sucks the rest of your night ended up regrettable but you had no idea. You were meeting up with your girlfriend when she’d asked you to, after having gotten zero alone time with her since arriving.”

“Yeah.. I dunno the whole thing just made me feel so alone and confused and scared of not recognizing Harper. After we fought next morning I seriously wanted nothing more than to get the hell out. The rideshare back would’ve been a cool 1k though so no chance.”

“ _Yikes._ ”

“Yea, so. Thank god we’d exchanged numbers and you’d been around and willing to go out.”

“I cannot emphasize enough how little I have to do when in town. There for fam only. I was happy to hang out, plus you were super distressed.”

“ _God_ I wanted to forget it already while I was still in the middle of it. Why do you think I was drinking spiced alcoholic whatever at the party without checking what was in it?” 

Chock full of a decidedly festive amalgam of spices for sure, but not a beverage that had gone down smoothly or satisfyingly. All that could really be said in its favor was _“it was alcohol.”_

“Also, sorry again that I was really a huge downer and self absorbed at the time.”

“I did tell you I’d murdered my parents and you didn't bat a lash.”

“You said...what— _when??”_

“Dude, again, _don’t_ worry about it. That was a shit night. I...when I was looking for you after I grabbed some different drinks I noticed both you and Harper were missing and I hoped you guys were setting things right.”

“ _Oh_ boy. Not uh, not exactly.”

“Yup, cleared _that_ misconception up quickly and chaotically enough. Watching what you two went through after Harper and Sloane tore into the room…”

“Was worthy of America’s Top Holiday Trainwrecks?”

“Not even remotely a fun kind of holiday trainwreck either. That was _horrible_. Sloane Caldwell’s never been one to win any personability awards but outing Harper was _seriously_ fucked,” Riley notices some mix of anger, hurt, regret slip into her voice the more she says about that night. “And when _that_ came out of Harper’s mouth I… Well _fuck_ it very nearly took me back to high school. More than I’d felt that way in years.”

“Oh _god_ Rilo, I hadn’t thought about that...”

“In some ways it almost felt _more_ shocking than the first time,” Riley laughs short, humorless, “even though I had my own taste of that behind me already. Doesn’t make my experience any easier but high school's a different world. People give a _genuine_ shit about competing for plastic crowns at a dance. We’re adults now. Planning to propose to someone is a huge deal and then to have _that_ happen.”

Abby looks thoughtful, frown on her lips and furrow between her brows. Her gaze is down like she’s working through something in her mind.

“Yeah I...realized over time that I think maybe I’d...skipped ahead too soon with that. The proposing.”

“Really?” Riley asks surprised. “Abby, you’re not someone to get engaged for the hell of it. And you were clearly head over heels for Harper.”

“I mean yeah, of course. I definitely think we’d been headed that way. But...I dunno. I didn’t realize this until a while after we’d broken up,” she lifts her head again but her eyes are still caught in some intangible place. “I think I got caught up in all of it. The idea of it. I think I was at least in some small part trying to rush to the finish line, get that last puzzle piece to the _picture perfect_ life in there you know?”

Abby is nothing like the Caldwells and their inflexible ideals of success always at the forefront of their priorities. But Riley knows her girlfriend has dreams, has discussed many of them with her late at night. This must be one of those dreams.

“How are you feeling now about how things turned out..?” she asks hesitantly. “Not like, are you sad you and Harper broke up— _obviously_ I was in the loop for processing that aftermath so I’m not like...asking if you regret being in our relationship.” 

Usually she doesn’t fumble so much talking to Abby even when she’s nervous. This isn’t something they’ve quite talked about yet—expectations for the futures they ultimately want for their lives, beyond the careers they’re building—and she hasn’t prepared to talk about it, but it seems amiss not to try dipping into this topic now that it’s naturally presented itself.

Abby waits patiently as Riley regroups and continues, “But if this was an important dream for you—storybook romance for the modern era culminating in a picturesque proposal and a good-old fashioned white wedding—and it didn’t happen the way you’d hoped… Where does it leave your plans now? Do you feel like that dream’s been dimmed for you or is still what you want?”

Her familiar contemplative face appears as Abby takes a moment to give these questions some earnest thought. Riley watches as she absentmindedly munches her way through two and a half pierogies while deep in reflection. 

“Yeah, I think it is,” Abby says at last. “But I can’t be so desperate to have it that I’m too wrapped up in the idea of it to pay attention to reality, what’s right in front of me.”

Here she looks up again with a soft smile for Riley. It’s pretty much as clear as it gets, given their literal staging currently, what “ _what’s right in front of me”_ means for Abby and Riley feels grateful for that. There will be more conversations about this ahead of them she knows, and she feels a little more ready to tackle those talks when they come. 

“I won’t rush for the sake of it anymore,” Abby resolves. “I don’t want to be so concerned with finishing the puzzle that I don’t see the picture I’m making.”

Riley looks at her and feels the steadiness of the commitment Abby is offering.

“That sounds good to me, Abs.” 

“Thanks for being with me, Riley,” Abby grins and pops the remaining half of her pierogi into her mouth. “Where do you think we’ll be another year from now?”

“Mm. Well, no one can know,” Riley starts. “But I hope we’re together. You make me really happy. Right now I really can’t see giving that up so I hope you’re cool with sticking around.” 

“You make me really happy too.” There’s a joyful eager shine to her eyes. “Yeah. I believe in us. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good. You and me meeting was one of those times the universe was really kind. I’m really grateful to have you, Abby Holland. Happy one year of knowing each other.” 

It isn't actually Christmas or even its Eve tonight but their time together this evening still fills her with glowing cheer. The day doesn't matter; the distance matters but doesn't dull the brightness. The person is most important of all. You'd never find this version of Christmas with its lack of snow, bedecked trees, and shiny presents on a holiday greeting card. Still, Riley knows that this—their words exchanged, laughter sparked, truths trustingly shared over finger foods and festive drinks—is one of her most memorable, warming, and significant Christmases to date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends! Apologies for the wait; I'd intended to have this out at least by Christmas but I was fortunate enough to be busy with a delicious, relaxing, heartwarming holiday reprieve from the world so I couldn't squeeze this out in time. I hope that you've gotten a chance recently to enjoy some time as well as we close out this special hell of a year!
> 
> Whew boy this was a long one folks! 11.7k words. Ch 4 was 8k and change by comparison, and that had been the longest chapter until now! Again, not my intention to keep making them all longer each time but this chapter was a particular challenge for me. One of the big factors in that was transitioning us to Riley's perspective in a way I hope was satisfying to read and did her justice. I've been excited and nervous for this chapter since the start! I hope the extra chunk of reading this chapter is just like, bonus content to enjoy; the rude part of my brain kept fretting about excessive word count. In retrospect there is no way this was ever going to work as a oneshot for me.
> 
> And thank you so very much for the warm enthusiastic reception of Ch 4! It's probably my favorite chapter and I did my best on it. Super happy to have it resonate with folks and deeply grateful for the thoughts you all shared on it.
> 
> I appreciate every single read, kudo, and bookmark and every comment makes me smile and keeps me going! So please drop me a comment if you like, let me know your thoughts, what bits you liked. I don't always have time or energy to devote to writing this fic but I love doing it, I'm happy with the story, and I'm thrilled and touched that y'all enjoy it, especially if you connect with the writing, narrative, or my reading of the characters in some way. That is a dear gift to me.
> 
> If you'd like to hit me up for any reason, I'm reachable at a bunch of internet spots listed in my profile!
> 
> Have a nice day friend, and I hope you your future holds delicious nostalgic foods, pleasant travel (in a safe context), and clarity on what you really want in life.


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